Unboxing Video & Quick Test Sandy SuperQboard

[SinclairSociety]

My newest video as I slowly collect items to make my QL a fun computer to use.

1st up is a sweet Sandy SuperQboard that a Facebook friend sent me... Stephen Usher... Thank you so much!

https://youtu.be/2wmcbBOhGLU

After this one I have some fun vDrive 1st test video to show. I was able to get it running but still more to do before video is done.

For now a quick unboxing and quick test of my SuperQboard.

TJ

[dex]

I see no manual for SuperQBoard on the video.
I have one manual spare, if You want it.

[Dave]

He downloaded the manual.

It fills me with so much joy that after all these years, bits of Sandy kit are still being shared around the world and bringing people joy.

It's really made my weekend.

[RalfR]

SQB 1.16T with TK2 2.07 seems to be quite an old version.... What about the "T"?

[Dave]

I'm sending a replacement ROM for him this week.

[stephen_usher]

What were the differences in the ROM versions?

By the way, I don't know the history of this card prior to rescuing it from disposal (along with the QL) by the Oxford University Department of Chemistry just over 10 years ago. It had probably been left behind by a retiring academic or some such years earlier and had been in a store. There was a bunch of other Sinclair stuff with it, including a couple of Spectrums, an extra Spectrum+ case, games, Currah uSpeech and a Ferguson datacorder.

Anyway, as you can see it was in pretty good condition:

(The QL had a Metacommco Pascal ROM and only one of the two JM ROMs installed but would work with the language ROM connected. This assumes that the person hadn't reprogrammed the language ROM with a "fixed" QDOS image.)

[Dave]

Version 1 and 2 were similar, except version 1 had 256K on the mainboard and an optional 256 on a slim board that went along the back edge. The vast majority of sales - 80%+ were of 512K versions, so they decided to combine them onto a single board. This is the board TJ has. The QIMI mouse came out and they wanted to incorporate it, plus they wanted to revise the bill of materials, so they did version 3 with no RAM on board, but a duplicate thru header for the expansion bus right by the DIN connector. This would take the separately developed 512K RAM card. About 30-40% of people wanted the QIMI mouse - at the time there was almost no software for it, and people didn't yet understand what a paradigm shift WIMPs were going to be.

[Edited to remove rambling...]

[RalfR]

Version 1 and 2 were similar, except version 1 had 256K on the mainboard and an optional 256 on a slim board that went along the back edge. The vast majority of sales - 80%+ were of 512K versions, so they decided to combine them onto a single board. This is the board TJ has. The QIMI mouse came out and they wanted to incorporate it, plus they wanted to revise the bill of materials, so they did version 3 with no RAM on board, but a duplicate thru header for the expansion bus right by the DIN connector. This would take the separately developed 512K RAM card. About 30-40% of people wanted the QIMI mouse - at the time there was almost no software for it, and people didn't yet understand what a paradigm shift WIMPs were going to be.

[Edited to remove rambling...]

I have never understand, why an old Pointer Interface (invoked with "Pointer") was built into the ROM. When I have got my (upgraded) SQB with mouse, there were newer ones in QRAM and Arnie wasn't able to explain, why they have done it. But I think, that was done by TT. Arnie told me "that TT is still updating the Pointer Interface". Yes...but no word about the Window Manager, which wasn't in the ROM . Perhaps it came at a late stage and it was originally planned to do all just with the Pointer Interface.

[Dave]

TT was basically God, and everyone ran around him like little minions. He was an order of magnitude more knowledgeable than anyone else on the subject of anything Ql, so nobody would openly question him.

I do recall they considered doubling the size of the EPROM at one point, and they DID move it to not being obstructed by the cover on V3 because removing the cover was a hassle and an opportunity for people to break things.

I thought the QIMI hardware was a weird way to do it. But then I took an immediate dislike to the PE anyway. Mostly, this is because of the relative garishness of PE in a 4-color or 8-color mode. It really needed to be grayscale or "hi-colour" - which back then was 256 colours!

[RalfR]

Hmmm, ok, but that does not really answered my questions...