The Sinclair QL Forum

Drat there is no Minerva Greek Keyboard driver - I will start a new thread on this

Tony sent me the remaining stock of blank Minerva PCBs.

I have sent two to a user in Europe and they did not report receiving either one.

If there is a demand, I can get the EPROMS and other logic and assemble some. However, I have created a ROM selector PCB that can accept four ROM sets and switch any of them into the ROM position. I might actually get a few made.......... if you can wait a couple of years *blush*

Dave wrote:Tony sent me the remaining stock of blank Minerva PCBs.

I have sent two to a user in Europe and they did not report receiving either one.

If there is a demand, I can get the EPROMS and other logic and assemble some. However, I have created a ROM selector PCB that can accept four ROM sets and switch any of them into the ROM position. I might actually get a few made.......... if you can wait a couple of years *blush*

My QL is fitted with a 2-ROM switching board made by members of the former QLEA (East Anglia) group many years ago.

It has a Minerva and JM ROM installed, oiginally for software testing, and has a little toggle sitch on the back of the QL case to change ROMs - obviously you have to reset the QL after switching over or you'll get a lovely crash shortly after switching ROMs

Does your board sit inside the QL like that device ? If you've never seen one before it's on QL Wiki at http://www.rwapadventures.com/ql_wiki/i ... 20Switcher

Yes, my board sits in the rom slots. It has a 256 kbyte flash chip, which can contain four 64k blocks. These can be selected in by a switch at the back. It's just a toy, but I'd be happy to formalise it and publish the files. It's fairly trivial.

Dave wrote:Yes, my board sits in the rom slots. It has a 256 kbyte flash chip, which can contain four 64k blocks. These can be selected in by a switch at the back. It's just a toy, but I'd be happy to formalise it and publish the files. It's fairly trivial.

Sounds good. The fact it uses flash memory means you don't need the physical ROMs once you've put the images in the flash memory. Great for testing software on different ROM versions.

Hmmm looking at the board I guess the switch operates a logic cut that swaps in and out control enables, I wonder how difficult it would be to replace with a push button and logic to do a rest at the same time alleviating the need for two physical operations, i.e. change the ROM, RESET the QL.

It's absolutely possible, but are people willing to pay 5 or 10 bucks extra for duplicate hardware that's harder to install, with a flying lead inside the QL. Also they might position incorrectly and cause a warranty/liability issue. Best to use the reset button that's already provided.

Back to my eprom programming questions!
If i understoodright, in the QL memory map, the first 48K are occupied by the firmware and the following 16K are used from the program which is plugged in the eprom cartridge slot at the back side of the QL.
Someone in the forum wrote that it is possible to have the 48K firmware(JM,JS,1Σ13,Minerva) and the 16K Toolkit II together in the same 27C512 eprom chip and they work fine! So, i programmed the eprom that way. The first eprom 48K part, includes Minerva and the following 16K partt, is the TKII. But it doesn't seem to work. I tried the command tk2_ext and next the command extras or print free_mem, i rewrote the eprom but with no avail...

chriskgnr wrote:The first eprom 48K part, includes Minerva and the following 16K partt, is the TKII. But it doesn't seem to work.

Do you see the TKII ROM banner on the boot screen? TK version should be displayed in green text if the ROM image is read correctly.

Best regards,
Petri

Hi,

I think you are referring to my post, I have a modified ROM Cartridge that maps the QL Rom and the Rom Port Areas.

If I remember correctly, it is just a matter of soldering some wire links on the cartridge.

I will try to find it over the week end and post some photographs.

Derek