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Mystery printer adapter
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 7:16 pm
by prime
Hi all,
I have this mystery printer adapter, can't remember where it came from
On the bottom of the board it has written :
"QL printer interface V1.00 1990" "(C) William James & Phill Batts"
The rom announces itself as "Parallel printer interface (C) HDB."
Anyone know what it is.
I've traced the circuit and dumped the ROM and GAL incase anyone is interested.
Cheers.
Phill.
Re: Mystery printer adapter
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 7:41 pm
by RWAP
Never seen anything like that before !!
Need to add this to the QL Wiki - please send Dilwyn a dump of the ROMs (I guess Dilwyn is keeping these?)
Re: Mystery printer adapter
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 7:57 pm
by Dave
Is the ROM code position independent?
Re: Mystery printer adapter
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 7:59 pm
by dilwyn
RWAP wrote:Never seen anything like that before !!
Need to add this to the QL Wiki - please send Dilwyn a dump of the ROMs (I guess Dilwyn is keeping these?)
I suspect William James might be the same William James who wrote one of the ZX Spectrum emulators for the QL. On my website, it says he collaborated with Dave Barker, Simon N Goodwin, Mark J Swift & Dave Walker, so any of them might know how to contact William James to check.
Re: Mystery printer adapter
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 8:04 pm
by dilwyn
prime wrote:Hi all,
I have this mystery printer adapter, can't remember where it came from
On the bottom of the board it has written :
"QL printer interface V1.00 1990" "(C) William James & Phill Batts"
The rom announces itself as "Parallel printer interface (C) HDB."
Anyone know what it is.
I've traced the circuit and dumped the ROM and GAL incase anyone is interested.
Cheers.
Phill.
HDB sounds like the late Dennis Briggs of Adman Services, possibly. I'm sure his initials were HDB.
Re: Mystery printer adapter
Posted: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:34 pm
by prime
Ok,
Here's a zip file with the contents of the ROM and the GAL.
Also included are the Eagle 6.x design files for the traced circuit.
Cheers.
Phill.
Re: Mystery printer adapter
Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2014 8:25 pm
by RWAP
dilwyn wrote:RWAP wrote:Never seen anything like that before !!
Need to add this to the QL Wiki - please send Dilwyn a dump of the ROMs (I guess Dilwyn is keeping these?)
I suspect William James might be the same William James who wrote one of the ZX Spectrum emulators for the QL. On my website, it says he collaborated with Dave Barker, Simon N Goodwin, Mark J Swift & Dave Walker, so any of them might know how to contact William James to check.
Having spoken with Simon Goodwin, he has clarified:
William James was the author of Speculator, Dennis Briggs introduced him to [Simon] and they worked for several years together as Silicon Studio Ltd making an Amiga 34000-based Digital Audio workstation in the 1990s. [Simon is] still in touch with his former flatmate and collaborator
Simon Jenkins, who now lives in Bristol, but not William.... William lived in Colchester and was a student at Essex. The interface used address lines for output, naturally. [Simon doubts] if more than a handful was ever made. [Simon] never had or used one.