CST Thor 21

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aalea
Brittle Membrane
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Re: CST Thor 21

Post by aalea »

Time ago I was doing some investigation about the Thor.

mainly is possible to install a normal QL board in the case, you only need to take care that original power supply conector do not have a hole in the case and the keyboard.

* The TOP board is a unmodified QL board, or perhaps minimun modifications, CPU and ROM can be removed if used the 68020 board.
* The 68020 CPU + ROM board is not mandatory, you can have the normal 68008.
* The Power Supply is a +5v, +12v, -12v, all DC and stabilized , it need to supply to the aditional boards and disk drives, a Spectrum +2A or +3 can be replacement in case of emergency.
* The "Back Plane" is a expecial one, you can not connect anything to the botton conector, because it wire the signals in a diferent way, and it do something similar to the Qplane, where supply +5V to the QL and other boards without use the internal regulator.
* The botton PCB is a sum of other boards, something similar to 512Kb of RAM + SCSI interface + Floppy Disk Interface + PS2 keyboard + QIMI like Mouse + ICE + Roms in the free memory area, CST sell some of this previously as separate boards. as a note it provide the correct voltajes on the expansion slot, so not need to do modifications like in qplane.

Should be posible to create a new backplane that allow to conect a 512k Kb ram + Qubide + CST Floppy + ICE cartridge and you will have some similar to a CST Thor 20, lack of the expansion board and the aditional ROM, but nowday is posible to load exchange from a hardisk, the main problem is the keyboard. a diren interface or something similar is need.

This seen to be a good project for a future :-)


Derek_Stewart
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Location: Sunny Runcorn, Cheshire, UK

Re: CST Thor 21

Post by Derek_Stewart »

Hi,

All these problems were addressed in the 1990s, when I built many QL boards into a PC Tower Cases, with Qplane or Mplane attached to the QL., which allwed connection of PC Power Supplies.

I have an empty Thor 1 case with only the Disk Drives left from the Thor system, alas the Thor extension board was badly corroded by battery leakage.

I donated 2 Thor Extension boards to another Thor user.

So I will fit QL board into the case, with a ROM expansion board,


Regards,

Derek
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vanpeebles
Commissario Pebbli
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Location: North East UK

Re: CST Thor 21

Post by vanpeebles »

After a good battle, I got the battery out. Hardly any leakage, but gave the area a clean with some red deoxit.
thorbattery.jpg
PSU needs a full recap yet.


Derek_Stewart
Font of All Knowledge
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Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 11:40 am
Location: Sunny Runcorn, Cheshire, UK

Re: CST Thor 21

Post by Derek_Stewart »

Hi,

Can you post some pictures of the Thor 21 boards.


Regards,

Derek
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