The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi, does anyone have this interface operational?

With the information a get from this topic and from internet, I clone this interfaz, it work OK, more or less.

It init correctly, I can heard the "Ding" on boot, and SHOOT, EXPLODE and BELL work properly.
But I was unable to make "PLAY" work properly, sometimes it work, but most of time I get "Out of Range" error.
even the examples of the manual, with the properly prv15, is not working.
sometimes play 1,´pv15CDEp´work and others not.

I have ROM V1.10, have someone a updated one? Can someone dump the version V1.10 so I was able to CRC it to check if my rom is OK?

I check with several ROM (minerva, original...) but not seem to be a problem of imcompatibility.

I have the sources for, apparently, a version 1.40, but I cannot assemble them easily. Anybody any idea what assembler a file ending of "_mcc" might indicate?

aalea wrote:I have ROM V1.10, have someone a updated one? Can someone dump the version V1.10 so I was able to CRC it to check if my rom is OK?.

IIRC these were posted earlier somewhere, v1.10 (8K) and v1.31 (16K = 2x8K).

mk79 wrote:I have the sources for, apparently, a version 1.40, but I cannot assemble them easily. Anybody any idea what assembler a file ending of "_mcc" might indicate?

Isn't the extension a strong hint to the Metacomco Assembler?

ones' complement wrote:

aalea wrote:I have ROM V1.10, have someone a updated one? Can someone dump the version V1.10 so I was able to CRC it to check if my rom is OK?.

IIRC these were posted earlier somewhere, v1.10 (8K) and v1.31 (16K = 2x8K).
qsroms.zip

Thanks You, yes my ROM V1.10 is ok.

Interesting, the file V1.31 do not have 2 images of the ROM, it have 2 diferent ROMS, one boot as:
Merz & Bieniek QSound V1.3S (C) 1987

And the other boot as:
Jochen Merz QSound V1.31 (C) 1987

But the rest of the ROM is the same, only change the boot banner.

This rom seen to work better but not perfect, each time I use play incorrectly, it cause next command of play to error with "Out of range", but at least later i can made sound again without need to reboot.

by the way if anyone want to do a clone, I put the gerber, schematic and other things here: https://github.com/alvaroalea/QL_QsoundQprint_clone

Hi,

Hi, does anyone have this interface operational?

I remember very well that I got the examples working - at least some of them about 1 year ago. It was a hassle to copy them to Microdrive thus I will never forget.
How does this help? Do you have the example sound files?

Best regards,

Stephan

tofro wrote:Isn't the extension a strong hint to the Metacomco Assembler?

Bingo. Never used that one before, but it assembled the file without a hitch. Not sure if this ROM works or if it was ever released in this version, but it's probably worth a try.

mk79 wrote:

tofro wrote:Isn't the extension a strong hint to the Metacomco Assembler?

Bingo. Never used that one before, but it assembled the file without a hitch. Not sure if this ROM works or if it was ever released in this version, but it's probably worth a try.

Thanks, I burn it, and works, very similar to 1.31 (apart from banner only change 3 bytes between both roms), so continue to have errors with the sample of the manual.

Can you share the source code?, I think will be very interesting, very didactic, to have the source code (hopefully with comments )

aalea wrote:I put the gerber, schematic and other things here: https://github.com/alvaroalea/QL_QsoundQprint_clone

BTW the 6821 PIA reduces the noise that would otherwise be heard from AY if its data lines were directly connected to QL data bus.

Silvester wrote:

aalea wrote:I put the gerber, schematic and other things here: https://github.com/alvaroalea/QL_QsoundQprint_clone

BTW the 6821 PIA reduces the noise that would otherwise be heard from AY if its data lines were directly connected to QL data bus.

Well, even if this is correct, I dont think that was the reason to use it. I don't know the price of the 6821 in the 80's but there is TTL chips like the 74LS245 that can do the same job, for a fraction of the cost, and that reduce the code need for use the sound chip, now you need to do one o more writes to the 6821 for select the BC1 & BC2 lines, and then do another writes to the sound chip.

Other 8-bit systems don't have this and don't suffer from any noise issues.

There are also clues on the PCB that indicate me that noise was not a big concern, the number, position and value of the capacitors, for example are far from ideal.
There is no filter at output of the chip, ground backplanes, and the PCB traces, probably done at hand, indicate me that noise was not a issue.