Gold Card Mystery

[RWAP]

Hmm - not sure what has happened here - I was using a Gold Card for testing and making disks last night (definitely post burning my finger on the 8301 chip...)

Unfortunately, this morning on the same QL (and a couple of others I tried at random), I just get black and white horizontal lines and or the dreaded buzz form the speaker.

Any ideas?

[1024MAK]

It's only compatible with a user with a preheated finger?

Mark

[Dave]

The only difference between then and now is that now the card is cold.

[XorA]

After seeing what you did to the ULA, its gone on strike!

[RWAP]

True - I might lift out the memory chips as I did get a white screen at one point - I have had an issue in the past where one leg on a memory chip was no longer attached - the card worked once it was warm and the leg expanded!!

[Dave]

I have a *lot* of memory ICs around here - I can put some kits of standard replacement chips if there's a demand for it.

I have already been working on putting together kits of the common electrolytic capacitors that fail in the QL and its PSU.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

How about a new up to date Altera EP1810 replacement.

This would mean a decode of the Gold Card Logic...

Derek

[Dave]

Given the problems of decoding what the (S)GC logic did, then implementing it on a new device, would it just be easier to design a new Gold Card from scratch? That way you're not tied to using old components, compatibility issues, and the rest of the hardware aging out too.

The UltraQ interface board will have its own CPU - let's see what we can do with that - it should be possible to get most of the way to Gold Card speed. The QL2 will be a lot faster than the SGC.

[RWAP]

Good News

I need to check it again later, but having removed the four memory chips - I found one of them had a bent leg - so maybe the leg was not pushed into the socket and was just touching the top - ok once heated up....

Having straightened the leg (or two), it now starts up fine.

Derek - if you have any spare memory chips, it might be worth me replacing this one with the bent leg - you also need to pick up those EPROM chips for preservation of their images.

As for re-doing the ALtera chip - I doubt that there are many (if any) Super / Gold Cards out there any more with the failed Altera chip - but I would rather Dave concentrate on the SuperQ2 board or whatever it is called that will be an affordable alternative to the Super Gold Card

[dilwyn]

It's only compatible with a user with a preheated finger?

Mark

Gives a whole new meaning to "hot swapping"

Now we know why Tony Tebby called them Hotkeys!