The Sinclair QL Forum

Depends on if you are talking about the male or the female part.
Dave talks about female.

Hi,

I would make the connections for serial ports the same as the QL serial ports are connected.

But maybe the German QL could be used as a template, as this has 9 Pin D connectors, why not use that a sort of loose standard.

dex wrote: Dave talks about female.

So my reply was right, then he accidentally quoted my post about male connectors with the picture of male connectors?

The male part in the U.K. is normally called a jack plug. However the 6.35 mm (​¼ inch) version is also known as a phone connector, phone jack, audio jack, or headphone jack. What it is called, partly depends on where in the world you are.
These names / terms may also be used for the 3.5mm size connectors and the 2.5mm size connectors.

The U.K. term for the female connector is jack socket, or just socket. There are various different configurations for the sockets, single channel (mono), two channel (stereo), three channel etc. Some have an integral switch, some of these are electrically separate from the socket contacts, while other designs may not be electrically separate. Two channel switched sockets may have two switches.

More information here

Mark

tetroid wrote: But I see different between SER1 ( J6 ) and SER2 ( J5 ) on Issue 6 board: RxD and CTS - input for SER2 but output for SER1, TxD and DTR - output for SER2 but input for SER1 ). I'm a little confused what the correct and useful pinouts for new board?.

I always thought the original idea was that SER1 (DCE ie. Communicator) was intended to be used with printer (conventionally DTE, ie. Terminal end point) and SER2 (DTE) was to be used with a modem (conventionally a DCE, intermediary in RS232 speak). The idea being that you only ever needed to use straight cables with RS232 (Huh!). It was a just useful twist (pun) that if you plugged something into SER1 and it didn't work then just try SER2.

(It is discussed on page 13/14 of Concepts section in QL user manual)

QLvsJAGUAR wrote:Regarding the AY3-89x, nice would be an on Tx board implementation of a let's say AY-3-8910A similar and compatible to the QSOUND expansion card. See thread viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1587
Regarding the firmware, a later version 1.31 can be found in the Toolkits section of the SBASIC/SuperBASIC Reference Manual (e.g. in THE DISTRIBUTION in the folder/file \doc\basic\SBASIC_SuperBASIC_Reference_Manual\Toolkits\QSOUND_V1_31).

QSOUND interfaces the AY-3-8910 through a 6821 I/O chip (a common solution when driving the unconvential BDIR & BC1 chip select pins of the AY). But then QSOUND also uses a quirky minimal way of accessing 6821 chip from the QL. (The only info I have is derived from the PCB images posted on this site).

It wouldn't be too difficult to patch the QSOUND ROM code to drive an AY3-89xx accessed/addressed differently. The only thing that is a bit odd is QSOUND uses the 68008 E clock (7.5MHz/10 = 750khz) as the AY clock source (on which all tone frequencies are based).

tetroid wrote:3. We have free place and I add the battery backup socket and parts for ZX8302 battery input. These parts are optional.

You'll need to prohibit access to ZX8302 until RESET ends else the 68008 can reset the QL Clock (spurious access for 4mS after voltage reaches 5V during reset). The QIMI circuit solution is to intercept PCENL to ZX8302 during reset (see Qimi PNG on Dilwyn's website).

Quanta magazine January 1988 page 28 has Tony Tebby's definitive article on ZX8302 battery problem (apparently Sinclair "...bought tens of thousands of batteries... but they didn't work").

If it wasn't for the lack of suitable mice, CTRL2 replaced with QIMI mouse would be ideal (no special mouse drivers required - built into PE and SMSQ/E). But I guess you would have sacrifice one of the ROM sockets to provide space for additional QIMI circuit directly on QL PCB.

Silvester wrote:If it wasn't for the lack of suitable mice, CTRL2 replaced with QIMI mouse would be ideal (no special mouse drivers required - built into PE and SMSQ/E).

Please note that Detlef designed a PS/2 mouse adaptor. Could make sense to contact him, if support for available mice is intended.
Direct PS/2 mouse support in the PE would be even better, SMSQ/E has most of the code anyway for the Q68.

(My personal preference for this project is still "close to original", not a pimped board with all sorts of interfaces from sound to mouse.)

Cristian wrote:

Dave wrote: No, it isn't. Not quite. An ordinary audio jack is not switched, and does not connect the termination resistor needed at the end of a NET run. The QL sockets internally connect the resistor when the jack is removed.

I respect your great technical knowledge and I admit I'm not an expert.
Still, I've been using a normal audio jack for about 3 years. It's self-made, 10 meters long, and tested also with other people's QLs. I'll take some photos as soon as possible.

Hehe, we're talking about different things, sorry! I *think* you're talking about the plug - I'm talking about the socket. Yes, an ordinary audio cable works fine for NET use. The *socket* is what isn't a plan audio socket. Or rather, it is, but it is a particular type designed to switch a resistance so there's always a load on the output of an amp, not just an open circuit.