The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi all,
it all started earlier this month with an invitation for coffee and cake in my offices.
Yesterday afternoon some of the Swiss QL fellows met. There was even a South German QLer who joined the party. It was not only about coffee and cake (even we enjoyed that). We found the time to do some QL tinkering.

Here’s the video:
http://www.youtube.com/user/QLvsJaguar

The pictures are in the Shows/2011 Lake Valley CH folder of my Sinclair QL Picture Gallery (see first link below).

Cheers, Urs
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QLvsJAGUAR - Much more than retro! - Always remember: QL forever!
Pictures: http://cid-c250d8748980ce5a.photos.live.com/albums.aspx
http://www.flickr.com/photos/qlvsjaguar/
Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/QLvsJaguar#g/p
Website: http://www.qlvsjaguar.homepage.bluewin.ch
Old school but cool

Urs,

Your Ser-USB in that video seems to be spending an awful lot of time sitting there not responding to a DIR command (3 minutes or so!). From what I can see on the video, it looks like the watchdog timer abandoned the I/O attempt as non-responsive. I think you forgot to issue a QM_GO command after loading the driver. This is essential, as you don't have a superHermes on that machine.

QM_GO starts the Queue Manager, which is needed for all QL hardware that uses the unmodified QDOS serial driver. Only superHermes or SMSQ with alternative serial hardware will work without the Queue Manager present.

The ROM Ser-USB driver version 1.04 automatically starts the Queue Manager if a configuration parameter indicating standard QL hardware was used with the SER_USB command, thus avoiding this issue altogether.

In v1.05 it's intended that the Queue Manager will be overhauled and renamed the UIOS service (User Mode I/O from Supervisor Mode).

Or you could use the FAT driver which requires no extra components to be loaded, as it performs all of its I/O in user mode.

Regards,

Adrian
http://www.memorylanecomputing.com

MemoryLaneComputing wrote:I think you forgot to issue a QM_GO command after loading the driver. This is essential, as you don't have a superHermes on that machine.

QM_GO starts the Queue Manager, which is needed for all QL hardware that uses the unmodified QDOS serial driver.

In Today's coffee hour I gave it another go, QM_GO to name it precisely and oh wonder it works!

Here's a PICture of my success:
https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=c250d874 ... &sc=photos

Many thanks for the hint.
Urs

I just had a look at your pics. That sawn off QL looks pretty mad!

vanpeebles wrote:I just had a look at your pics. That sawn off QL looks pretty mad!

That specific QL has a special history. I acquired it years ago from ex SRL leftovers. It’s not a factory made QL. It’s a hand assembled test unit made of a case bottom without engraved serial number, a production line early ISS5 pcb for use with EPROMs (IC17, the 74LS00, is installed in a socket), Firmware AH (QDOS 1.02), no MicroDrive units mounted, no speaker mounted, no case top.

I had this spare sawn off German edition case top which was left over from my 1991 ExeQtor production run. The German edition QL with MicroDrive units was used in the ExeQtor.

So, this became my experimental QL.

Urs

Wow, very impressive!