The Sinclair QL Forum

Good find on that printer though - we never see these in mainstream outlets here, as USB has largely taken over as the connection of choice for the masses, and indeed I would think so many more people now even use WiFi.

I can remember when you could print from latptops and some phones using IR ports on our HP printers in the office back in the nineties!

Pr0f wrote: I can remember when you could print from latptops and some phones using IR ports on our HP printers in the office back in the nineties!

... which never really worked for me - about half of the prints used to fail because someone interrupted or reflected the beam... (same applies to syncing the PDA - another extinct thing - over IR)

Pr0f wrote:

RalfR wrote:I do not understand the meaning of the missing PAR port.

The new Super Gold Card clone was re-made without the Parallel Printer port - presumably because finding a suitable printer is almost impossible nowdays.

I still use my Epson Laser EPL-5200 with parallel port but a SGC without PAR is useless for me. The drivers are still there and it can't be much hardware needed for it.

RalfR wrote:I still use my Epson Laser EPL-5200 with parallel port but a SGC without PAR is useless for me

Then don't buy one I have only used the PAR port twice, for my sound chip-experiment and for debugging. Generally I find the smaller form factor neat and a PAR port would make the card bigger again, I like it. I also thought the two FLP connectors to be overkill in the original.

mk79 wrote:

RalfR wrote:I still use my Epson Laser EPL-5200 with parallel port but a SGC without PAR is useless for me

Then don't buy one I have only used the PAR port twice, for my sound chip-experiment and for debugging. Generally I find the smaller form factor neat and a PAR port would make the card bigger again, I like it. I also thought the two FLP connectors to be overkill in the original.

I have used my PAR port, since I have had my SQB, that time with an Epson LQ-1050 24pin. When I have had my MegaST 4, I have used the Epson Laser, still I do with QPCprint. So why do I used to have a much quicker QL without beeing able to print from text87 or QPLQ?

These are the hardware addresses from SMSQ source:

glc_base equ $1c000 hardware base
glo_pdat equ $70 PAR port data reg
glo_pstb equ $78 PAR port strobe ST to set, TST to clear
glo_prdy equ $e0 PAR port msb set if ready

No idea which pins on the CPLD these correspond to - the parallel port itself is I think an LS TTL Latch chip.

Yeah, I did name these registers

I am assuming with my reverse engineering head on - that the strobe function can be done with a 74LS74 or it's cmos equivalent, and a 373 for the main data out or 573 for nicer pins, then you just need to read D7 for the ready signal at the correct address - so you could build out the PAR port, but of course somewhere on the CPLD these decoded signals are present already - just a question of finding them...

Today (well, late last night UK time) I received an email, with this link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1484257898

Coming soon......


Cheers,
Norm.

NormanDunbar wrote:Today (well, late last night UK time) I received an email, with this link:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1484257898

Coming soon...... .

Nice! Congratulations!