CST Expander and other updates

[dilwyn]

I always found it interesting that certain connections in the BUS have to be buffered.

When I built my QL in a small PC case, I built a standing bus extension behind the mainboard, and also a slot for the QEP-III on the left side of the case, which you could plug in optionally. An Expanderam and a SuperQBoard were in the bus behind the mainboard and everything worked perfectly, without any buffering.

Perhaps it also depends on the QL itself whether this can work.

Maybe some were made buffered to allow for longer connections, or to cater for more types of card. I do remember the late Dennis Briggs (Adman Services) telling me that it could be hit and miss whether unbuffered expanders worked with some combinations of cards.

[Wicksy]

I'll park some other links for wiki, if I get approved I'll do them. If am turned down I won't imnd, one less job to do.

Anyhow, the Memodisk interface. Here it mentions that most of the routines are supplied on a separate rom cart, with minimal routines on the card itself. The cart wasn't supplied with the no memory version of the interface.

https://archive.org/details/sinclair-us ... ew=theater

Sandy Twin expansion, the article shows it needs a card with a through connector as it can't be used on it's own. The wiki doesn't mention this, it paired well with the Sandy RAM card or similar.

https://archive.org/details/sinclair-us ... ew=theater

[aalea]

Can some one identify this expander board?

A friend sent me this pictures, but I'm not sure if is a memory expansion or the Q+2 that your talking, by the text on the board, the unpopulated ROMs in the pcb and the detail that the top board can't be easy removed.

[Pr0f]

That's the CST unit - CST RAM Plus - it's a 512K memory expansion, plus 4 Eprom positions (upto 32K each I believe - sockets and additional components not usually fitted for these ROM positions) and an additional bay to take another expansion card.

https://qlwiki.theqlforum.com/doku.php? ... st_ramplus

[Wicksy]

You can populate it with 4x 16k roms, as well as 4x 32k - after talking to Simon Goodwin who owns one.
There's a few 32k rom images available though.

[Pr0f]

nothing to stop you adding 2 16K images together and making a 32K rom image - the QL's ROM scan logic will be looking for 16K ROM's anyway - so if you have 2 ROM's concatanated together to make a 32K then it will find both ROM's.

The only caveat with this - if the ROM images are less than 16K in size, you will need to fill the empty space upto the 16K boundary - so that both ROM images start on a 16K boundary - regardless of length.

You can do this in a Hex editor, or some ROM programmers will let you manage the location of a ROM within the workspace before programming it.

[Wicksy]

Agreed. But for users like me, without the equipment or knowhow, fitting existing roms taken from a cartridge would be easier than trying to find someone to make a 32k.

The downside of course is you have less software on the board. The other thing if I did get a Ramplus, is having one readily soldered to accept roms. My soldering is shite and I've never really done any.