The Sinclair QL Forum

At the beginning of the year a shout went out to geeks in Oxford to see if anyone could supply computers and ephemera for an exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science (the first purpose built museum in the world) called "Geek is Good", detailing geekdom through the ages back to the enlightenment.

I responded and offered a number of machines, including one of my QLs, for the public display where members of the public are encouraged to do hands-on programming. The offer was accepted.

Thanks to RWAP, I was able to get an extra floppy drive and so all was set.

The exhibition began in mid May and my QL, along with a friend's BBC Micro have been doing stirling work promoting programming for the masses. If you're in the area and want to have a look the exhibition runs until the end of September.

Anyway, here are the champs doing their job... (sorry about the camera shake.)

Excellent - I always thought the one item which should have been developed was some sort of switch box for systems to share floppy disk drives!

RWAP wrote:Excellent - I always thought the one item which should have been developed was some sort of switch box for systems to share floppy disk drives!

I think I did see one of these in a catalogue once (was rather a long time ago mind).

If you are into hacking cables or making your own, you could use a 25 way D type switch box. IIRC it has more than enough pins (Atari ST/STe machines used a 14 way DIN plug for up to two external drives).

Mark

Hi,

Just a first thought, maybe only the Drive Select Lines would need to be switched. If this worked then the number of wires to be switched would be greatly reduced.

This is something I could use, I have a 4 port serial switch box, I would use that to see if this would work.

If you and the computers are happy with a shared/common ground, yes you can reduce the number of switched connections.
I recommend the motor on connection be switched, the drive select and the data lines be the ones switched.

Mark