SOLVED !! resurrecting one time the original rom plus kludge

[dilwyn]

The order of ROMs issued was FB - PM - AH - JM - JS - MG, with various national versions in between. You can tell the order just by looking at the QDOS version in each ROM (e.g. PM had QDOS 1.02, JM 1.03, JS 1.10, MG 1.13).
I can't find the reference off-hand, I seem to recall that Andy Pennell's QDOS or Assembler books said FB had QDOS 1.01, so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that some of the first QLs might even have had something even more incomplete before this (hard to imagine with my memories of struggling with FB on my first QL, which was pretty unusable). But that's just speculation on my part.

There were a few others internally at Sinclair (as you can tell from the gaps in QDOS numbering), but not known to be issued widely. For example, the TB ROM which had QDOS 1.03 was somewhere between JM and JS but didn't make it into wide circulation.

AFAIK, PM is the earliest version actually preserved - I would certainly like to have a copy of FB to preserve. IIRC, Chr$ did have an original dongle board but did not have all of the chips to preserve all the code.

[techy]

@ dilwyn ,

Thank you for all this info .

It is pm right now , so it should even be a usable ql .

[tofro]

@ dilwyn ,

Thank you for all this info .

It is pm right now , so it should even be a usable ql .

I think that for anything before JM, you should really put "usable" in quotes . They really still have some nasty bugs. JM is "mostly usable" and JS/MG would be the "most usable" ROMs.

[techy]

@ tofro ,

I only wanted to have one of my ql's ( you can not use all at the same time ) be a real kludge version .


And that one is running right now with the help of the forum and the designer of the re-made pcb

[tofro]

@ tofro ,

I only wanted to have one of my ql's ( you can not use all at the same time ) be a real kludge version .


And that one is running right now with the help of the forum and the designer of the re-made pcb

If you want a "Kludge-replica" that's absolutely fine with me, I get it, and congrats that you managed. Just wouldn't want to use it for anything half-serious

[techy]

it is about the same thing as having a zx80 ( clone ) or a ql-wafer prototype -replica .

no real use but looks damn good on the shelf