QL 34th Anniversary new hardware.

[Dave]

Just waiting on one part and some testing... Or you'd have got the big one today.

[johnh]

Happy birthday, Dave.

If there are any left, I'd like a Miniplane with 3 connectors.

I'd also like a Minerva upgrade with the standard ROM images.

John Hall

[Dave]

Ok. All the Miniplanes have been reserved. If Paul has sold all his, should I get some more PCBs made? I could just add them to another order for something else and the cost would be quite low.

[Sparrowhawk]

Happy 50th!

Forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is a buck? And where on / in a QL does it go. Is soldering involved?

.

[Dave]

You know that big black heatsink behind the microdrives? The little hot component on there is the 7805, a 5 volt regulator. It's grossly inefficient, and all that wasted energy is turned into heat.

A buck regulator is for practical purposes a switched, high efficiency transformer. They are much more efficient - 92-96% is common. My design is 96% efficient.

This means two things for your QL. First, there's much less heat behind the microdrives. Second, all that heat WAS energy drawn through the power brick from the wall. The load at the power brick is less, and your meter runs a bit slower. It's basically replacing 80s components with 2000s components from modern electronics.

[Derek_Stewart]

You know that big black heatsink behind the microdrives? The little hot component on there is the 7805, a 5 volt regulator. It's grossly inefficient, and all that wasted energy is turned into heat.

A buck regulator is for practical purposes a switched, high efficiency transformer. They are much more efficient - 92-96% is common. My design is 96% efficient.

This means two things for your QL. First, there's much less heat behind the microdrives. Second, all that heat WAS energy drawn through the power brick from the wall. The load at the power brick is less, and your meter runs a bit slower. It's basically replacing 80s components with 2000s components from modern electronics.

Hi,

Do you mean:

Sinclair QL Power Module ( 7805 replacement )

134x134x28469_QL,P20power,P2001_153px.jpg.pagespeed.ic.7xbRqH1UfU.jpg (25.01 KiB) Viewed 15904 times

[Dave]

No, that’s tetroid’s version. Mine is smaller and configurable/adjustable.

[Sparrowhawk]

Hi Dave, thanks for the explanation. I reckon that would be worth having - as long as installation is not too complicated ?

I never have been any good at the hardware front. I just about managed to change the keyboard membrane without killing my bbql, but that's the limit of my tinkering skills.

[Dave]

You take off the top cover, undo the screw in the middle of the heatsink, pull off the heatsink and 7805, plug in the buck regulator, and seal up your QL.

Done!

[Whopper]

Dave,

Can the buck regulator replace the 7805s on the micro drives?

Whopper