The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi

Afx has sent me his Gold Card 2 because it does not work with my 4 layer qubide . I've started to see what happen and I found a strange thing ( for me) in gold card2. Pins a7 and a8 ( A19 and A18 signals) are joined to gnd .

I would like to know If someone has a gold card 2 and can check it.

Thanks

José Leandro

jose_leandro wrote:Hi

Afx has sent me his Gold Card 2 because it does not work with my 4 layer qubide . I've started to see what happen and I found a strange thing ( for me) in gold card2. Pins a7 and a8 ( A19 and A18 signals) are joined to gnd .

I would like to know If someone has a gold card 2 and can check it.

Thanks

José Leandro

The Super Gold Card manual says:

"Signals A0...A19, D0...D7, DSL and RDWL are high impedance while RESETCPUL is low.

The Super Gold Card can drive peripherals, which it maps into the area from $4C0000 to $4FFFFF, provided that they do not use VPAL, E, BRL, BGL or BERRL. Signals are not synchronised with CLKCPU. Signals A18 and A19 on the expansion connector are both high during access to the peripheral area. A18 and A19 are both low during other accesses to the QL."

Hope that helps!

jose_leandro wrote:Hi

Afx has sent me his Gold Card 2 because it does not work with my 4 layer qubide . I've started to see what happen and I found a strange thing ( for me) in gold card2. Pins a7 and a8 ( A19 and A18 signals) are joined to gnd .

I would like to know If someone has a gold card 2 and can check it.

Thanks

José Leandro

Hi José,

I have tested the following:

Gold Card 3: A18, A19 = GND

Super Gold Card Red PCB: A18, A19 <> GND
Super Gold Card Blue PCB: A18, A19 <> GND

Both A18 and A19 on the Super Gold Card are connected, but not to ground, which probably accessing more RAM. With the Super Gold Card having 4Mb rather 2Mb on the Gold Card.

I was going to remove all the components from the Super Gold Cards, to determine the circuit diagram, as both have suffered damage to the CPU pins, either bending or snapping off.

Hi

Thanks both.

I know that qubide needs A18 and A19 to put its rom in the right side. For this reason, I told you that It is strange this situation. It can not work.

Afx has a gold card 2 with red PCB with 2mb ram.

I will try this night to follow the tracks of pcb but I doubt I can. This is a very complex pcb and probably it is 4 or more layers pcb. Quit the chips is also a good idea.

Bye

José Leandro

Hi José,

The Ground Plane will probably be one of the inner layers, along with the power plane.

The original Qubide worked OK with the Gold and Super Gold Card, But there was no memory on board.

What do you use A18, A19?

Hi

Well, I just found the problem. It is not a gold card problem, it is a my qubide

When I designed the 4 layer qubide , I left RGB signal to simplify the circuit ( and also to have less noise). Today I discover that gold card use VSYNC and VPAL signal . Bad for me

I take afx qubide and put two wires. :





I have to quit 68008 processor like original documentation said ( because it doesn't work with it)

Thanks all

José Leandro

Good thing they are through hole connectors and easy to solder

I got caught out with the VSYNC thing with an RGB cable without a resistor on that line!

Jose Leandro,

Good you got it fixed. I'm actually not sure I can see the wires in the picture, but I think I will be able to connect them to the right pins on my board.

BTW: VPAL is actually not a video signal, but rather "Valid Peripheral Address Low", used for interfacing with legacy 6800 I/O devices and autovector-interrupts.

Cheers,
Tobias