The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi.
What do I need (complete list) in order to build a cased (ATX) QL ? ..


Thanks.
Massimino ..

Such a simple question, but not an easy answer....

You have to decide if you are going to use a normal QL motherboard (or an Aurora if you can find one), and whether you are going to add floppy disk drives, or find some way of adding the QL microdrives to the system mounted onto the case.

Then there are hard disks or a QL-SD card interface to consider and more....

Assuming you are going to use a standard QL....

First step is to think about power - the QL needs 12V, 0V and 5V which you can take from the PC power supply, but you will probably want to bypass the QL regulator and solder these directly to the QL motherboard.

You will either need to remove the microdrive units, or extend the cables on them so that you can mount the microdrive units on the face of the ATX case somewhere. I have seen this done, but extending those flexible cables is not easy.

The QL motherboard can be mounted in the bottom of the case (just about) - although you may need to drill some new holes in the case and add some plastic mounting collars to enable you to screw the motherboard down.

You will also need to add some form of keyboard interface (SuperHermes, the Jurgen Falkenberg interface, a Di-Ren interface or a Schoen keyboard interface to enable you to connect up a PC style keyboard). There is a Schoen keyboard interface and a jurgen falkenberg interface currently listed on sellmyretro.com

Those interfaces all fit into the 8049 socket on the QL, so you may find it easier to fit the keyboard interface before mounting the QL motherboard.

The QL-SD interface currently available fits into one of the QL ROM sockets so you may want to add that too - and possibly ask Paul to supply a longer cable so that you can mount the SD card reader on the front of the PC case.

If you want to add a disk interface / extra memory / hard disk interface (QubIDE), then you will need a backplace (mPlane is not suitable as that is designed for a board to sit next to the QL motherboard rather than above it). You will need a means of fixing the backplane in place.

Then you need to find a disk interface / memory expansion.... that is not easy...

I am sure I have missed something out....