The Sinclair QL Forum

Hello

I prefer running on real hardware rather than emulators.

I would be interested in either or both a Q60 and QXL board (I have a PC with ISA slots).

So if anybody has a Q60 or a QXL board for sale, let me know

Mark

QL2 might be ready before either of those come up for sale

Well, keep us posted please, Dave

Mark

I would still buy a QL2 and finish the QXL Cards.

But, the problem with the QXL/Super/Gold Cards is the Altera programming of the Glue Chip. I found someone on Ebay in the USA, who had all the Master Programming Adapters, bu no ISA interface card to the PC, all for the price of $299 + shipping.

So I guess Dave is correct, if on Miracle has used better chips to programme the logic on.

If only we knew the inner workings of the chip, we would maybe be able to work on a compatible replacement.

If that information were available, it would be a modest proposal to do a "Mega Gold Card" using an '030 at 50 MHz or so. That said, hooking it up to an old school QL does result in diminishing returns, and something like that really needs an Aurora or similar.

Hi,

The only files available to the Altera Chips in the QXL, Super/Gold Cards are in JEDEC format. I have looked for a JEDEC decompiler or disassembler. The only think I found was OPALjr, which has a JED2EQN.exe programme, available from:

http://www.brouhaha.com/~eric/retrocomputing/mmi/palasm

I never really got this to work, maybe this is due to the version of DOS.

Since Altera Programming hardware is very hard to find and is very expensive and needs a even more rare ISA Logic Programming Card LP6. That I could decompile the JEDEC files and use a more up to date Altera chip.

This is problay more difficult than resigning the Super Gold Card from scratch.

I bet that is where some good money is: making those LP6 cards.