The Sinclair QL Forum

Well, I have my D16 QL at last. What a beauty.

I knew it wasn't working and figured it was the membrane. The seller wasn't able to get a picture up but I took a chance, figuring I could always buy a membrane from RWAP if necessary. Anyway, I tried it out with a Spectrum +128 SCART lead and got a flickering picture which was obviously the monitor choice screen. No response from F1 or F2, as I expected. But it had been taken apart before - the warranty stickers had holes in them, exposing the screw heads.

So, out with the screwdriver, and I discover the ribbons are not in the sockets, but they are cracked and someone had already tried the old "cut them with scissors and plug them back in" trick. I trimmed them again past the cracked bit and with a bit of a struggle got them both plugged in. There's not much slack now.

I connected it up and hit the F2 key and the left hand microdrive fired up. So far so good. Once in SuperBasic I tried the other keys and they, too, are all working. Whey hey! Happy days!

Next on the check list are the microdrives and cartridges. It has the full Psion suite, plus a games cartridge that has been wiped (it's got a copy of Quill on it now, alas) as well as a set of four blank cartridges in a little carrying case. So it's in with the Quill cartridge and whack the reset button, then f2 again. Up it loads, a little noisily, but I'm in there nevertheless.

For a quick test, I typed a letter. I am very pleasantly surprised by the feel of the keyboard. It is not at all like the Spectrum+, having a much more positive feel and (at least) 2 key rollover. Impressive. Next up is Easel, which seems a bit pointless as it appears to be for drawing graphs and little else (read the manual, Jon!). It, too, loaded fine.

Finally, a quick SuperBasic proggie, the "Star" program from the Introduction in the manual. Gosh, it's really slow. I shouldn't be able to see it plotting the lines... Oh well, I recall it being a sluggard when I last tried one out 25 years ago. I've formatted a spare microdrive, and saved the program to it. No problems at all yet, but I will be reconditioning the microdrives ASAP as they have the foam pads.

I do like the look of it very much, and the keyboard is very nice for a Sinclair product. Is it because it's a later D16 model? It's in good condition apart from a scuff on the control key and the case just below it. This may come out with a little attention. I can't tell yet whether it is a deposit left on the plastic by whatever scuffed it, or it's actual physical damage. Doesn't matter though, it does not really detract from the thing.

I've been advised on another thread to invest in a floppy drive interface of some sort, but knowing this is a late model with (probably) well sorted microdrives and firmware, I'm not so sure. As long as I stick to reconditioned cartridges I may be OK. What say you all?

Reconditioning amounts to replacing the pad and retensioning the spring if necessary. Having bought some from an eBay seller, I am hoping they will last...

Thanks for reading this. I hope you can tell I'm a bit excited by it. I have a perfect, working QL with all accessories and original box (not that that bothers me but some people get excited by cardboard and "polys") and I got it for reasonable money. My next challenge is to get a decent picture on the RGB, but that, as they say, is another thread....

Cheers

JonB

Thanks for sharing! Your post brought back nice memories from days past. Oh, the excitement of unpacking and trying out the QL for the first time.

Hope you get the SCART stuff sorted.

Cheers,
Petri

Congratulations! You really do need floppies though. It also means you can access loads of software from the net too. The trouble I found with buying old microdrive carts is that most of them are worn out now or the felt has dropped to bits.

JonB wrote:Well, I have my D16 QL at last. What a beauty.

I knew it wasn't working and figured it was the membrane. The seller wasn't able to get a picture up but I took a chance, figuring I could always buy a membrane from RWAP if necessary. Anyway, I tried it out with a Spectrum +128 SCART lead and got a flickering picture which was obviously the monitor choice screen. No response from F1 or F2, as I expected. But it had been taken apart before - the warranty stickers had holes in them, exposing the screw heads.

Congratulations! I have been a QL user for most of the last 29 years (hey it's 30 years old next year) apart from a brief period in the late 80s, so I don't experience that rush of rediscovering it. Although I went through that with a ZX81 a while back

If having difficulties with the scart lead, there's an article on my website by Richard Cooke showing how to calculate the right values and voltages for the RGB. http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/hardware/index.html - scroll down to the SCART article.

I suppose if you just use your QL for writing your own SuperBASIC and general nostalgia of having it in your collection, you may be fine with microdrives if you have a good collection of reliable ones. If you add a disk drive, and want to get software off the web, it's easier with a floppy disk drive. With a microdrive only machine, your only chance of transferring software to it is via a serial link from a PC or similar. Most disk interfaces add memory too, which allows better caching of microdrives for slightly faster access. Try to get at least 512K of RAM if you add to the memory, that's what most of the older units added, whereas a Trump Card could give you up to 896K max. memory, while the rare and expensive Gold Card up to 2MB and the even rarer and more expensive Super Gold Card up to 4MB. The two Gold Cards add a faster processor too. Trump Cards and both Gold Cards include a disk interface.

Enjoy your rediscovery of the QL!

That's a fine resource you have built there, Dilwyn. Nice one!

I see a raft of info. I think first off will be a serial cable so I can transfer "stuff" to the QL. I'm not yet concerned with floppy drives as I think the interfaces are far too expensive.

The example I like to give is the TurboMMC drive for the BBC Micro. It hangs off the User Port (an 8 bit bidirectional parallel port) and acts like a floppy drive jukebox. It comes with a ROM which extends BBC basic and is compatible with DFS (the native disk system) yet it's only £20. There isn't much on the PCB to be fair, but it works and is really fast.

TurboMMC is an extremely cheap solution, but there are others and every one costs less than half what a Trump card might go for, and runs from SD or CF cards with PC compatible formatting so transfer is seamless. I guess the problem is that QLs are relatively rare, especially actively used ones, so the market for such a device would be small. It's a pity...