As a teen I wrote some commercial software for the QL which later helped fund my university course, much love for it, but that’s the first time I’ve ever seen inside one. Love the channel.
Kudus to one of the most underrated retro channels on YT! I've never had any of those machines (the 80's in Brazil were complicated and we mostly had clones of Z81/85, MSX, and Apple2 ) but what fascinates me even today is that in those days one could literally dig into those machines and really tinker with them as they mostly used parts that could be found on the market, the hardware and software were simple and a person could completely dominate both. Nowadays there's a lot of things you can play with but it's another level of complexity and makes that kind of hacks harder to do.
Retro computers are the best way to learn and understand computers. Todays' PC's and MAC's do way too much hand holding and restricting to the user. No fun there at all.
These '80s microcomputers could be completely understood by a person, both hardware and software. That is part of the appeal. These machines also have personality, unlike the PCs of today. Every one is unique.
@@Starchface You actually had to understand what a computer is and how it works. It's also how many of use learned how to code and many getting lucrative careers! This is completely lost on todays machines.
Haha, that's funny! You didn't make that one? I bought this QL and the upgrades from a user in qlforum. I figured they had gotten it from you back when you designed it?
@@NoelsRetroLab Larger docs mainly, but also I discovered much later that it seems that the QL uses overlays to make better use of the memory, and doing overlays over the microdrive... well, imagine :-D That explains why I was so happy with the QL while other people hated it: mine was fast :-D
Also, I think (not sure) that the expanded memory wasn't contended, which means that running code in it would be much faster. But this is pure speculation.
@@rastersoft nice, sounds like some kind of protect mode, to allows multithreading, something similar with OS/2, without enough memory that was a hell, but with enough memory that was so smooth and nice OS
I've been interested in getting a QL for many years. I didn't realise there's so many different modern upgrades for it. A very informative video - thank you!
Sadly, with today's CPUs, the best upgrade for the QL is running it inside a Windows emulator (like QPC2) at blistering speeds and with insane amounts of memory and video resolutions.
@@chirchir8126 I've nothing against emulation or FPGAs, but to say I've already got a fair few different machines I've pimped out, I've nothing against doing it with a QL.
I think what @chir chir is saying is that the QL Pointer environment has evolved to the point that it runs best on emulators than on the machines themselves, which is kind of crazy, but it's a possible path for the evolution of the OS.
An Amiga drive working with a QL, I wouldn't have thought that was possible! Great work ctesting the upgrades (that key click sound would drive me nuts too) & restoring the computers :-)
I have an identical drive; I bought & used it with PCs only! :) I think only Macs have an incompatible floppy drive. Perhaps also SparcStations which had floppy drives with motorized eject. Oh and I should also say "Good work, Noel!" I don't find it easy to test carefully, so I admire your work.
OK, I finally had the time to watch the video. Just a few comments: :-) Running MultiBasic: you just have to execute the "multib_obj" executable from the Minerva supplement disc. It has nothing to do with the second screen (though I guess you could move one to it), see the small chapter in the manual about it. The second screen in general didn't experience much use, so software support stayed very limited. Though a version of the pointer interface that uses it would be fun... hmm, maybe another day. Voltage regulator: I guess the noise would not be visible on the RGB output, so most people wouldn't notice. My QL_VGA RGB to VGA converter is currently available on SellMyRetro RAM upgrade: The 68008 can only address 1MB of memory, so with a few tricks 896kb of RAM is the maximum for a stock QL. The GoldCard with its 68000 has 2MB and the ultimate upgrade, the 68020 SuperGoldCard, has 4MB. I recommend the SGC if you can get your hands on one... The CPU in the QL is heavily slowed down because the video circuitry has priority access to the RAM. This type of RAM upgrade near the CPU or in the expansion slot does not suffer from this, so the QL will actually be faster. Other than the GoldCards there is only one HD capable floppy controller. It includes a Mouse interface (for Atari style bus mice) and I open sourced it a while ago here: www.kilgus.net/ql/herbert-card/ Floppys, for most years, were THE medium for the QL, most people upgraded to them and left the Microdrives behind. But floppy images never caught on in the QL world, it's all ZIP archives. Just extract them onto a floppy image in your favourite emulator if you want to have images.
Thanks for the comments. That makes a lot of sense. About the regulator: The video you were seeing was coming out of the RGB output (both on my TV and fed into the capture card had the same effect), so it's definitely being affected.
Really enjoying these QL videos! It inspires me to get mine out and start playing around with it :-) Please don't stop what you're doing!!! Some channels start off like yours and then begin to change and lose focus on what made them so interesting in the first place.
Back in the day - late 80s / early 90s QL software publishers provided software on microdrives, 5.25" floppies and 3.5" floppies. A lot of the original software media got over-written when people finished using the original programs, so not very much has survived - it's very rare to see second user QL software on floppies these days. Minerva ROMs were quite popular, I had several as they kept on updating them. And a couple of spare QL ROMs JM / JS / AH - you needed to check so much for compatibility issues. Internal RAM upgrades were good, but having an external one on a card meant you could remove it if the extra RAM caused compatibility issues. There were hard drives and interfaces available for the QL from Miracle Systems (and possibly other suppliers) but I could never afford one. Be interesting to see a working QL plus hard drive (or SSD) .
That makes a lot of sense. I didn't realize that RAM upgrades could cause compatibility issues! That's pretty bad! I have the feeling that a QL with an HDD emulator is the end game of this machine 😃
Agreed. And I'm only starting to scratch the surface. You can get Gold Cards, Trump Cards, fancier expansions, hard drives... It's a really upgradeable system!
@@NoelsRetroLab After looking at the cost of the clone Super Gold Cards, it would be nice if something similar to the Next, using the QL format was produced in an FPGA that could either replace the existing motherboard completely, or be produced in a modern case like the Next. Unfortunately I imagine cost and lesser demand will dictate it never sees the light of day. Then again, one could take the N-Go board, add the QL core, and try doing it that way, as expect interfacing with the old QL keyboard would take some work.
@@stephenvalente3296 There is a QL core for the MISTER. There is work going on to have a QL core for the Next. There is also Q68 which fits the whole QL hardware into a much smaller board. The Raspberry Pi 400 can also host a QL running on Java. I'd post links but youtube has a habit of deleting anything with links. Your search engine should find them. For more QL information check out : Dilwyn Jones Sinclair QL Pages .
@@stephenvalente3296 I recommend the Q68 which is basically the QL's version of the Spectrum Next (sans kickstarter). I did a video on it in early February and you can see it running Black Phoenix which is a collection of GUI elements of the Pointer Environment that makes it look like a Mac. The Q68 is pretty reasonably priced (around $200) and runs about 23x faster than a stock QL and comes with VGA, Ethernet, and dual SD cards. I'm working on designing a Rick Dickinson style case for it to make it even more like the Spectrum Next :-)
Thumbs up, already subscribed. I'm perpetually interested when you find things that don't work as expected - you save us a lot of grief. Thank you! Also, thank you for the smooth flow of your videos. I never feel like a minute is wasted.
Thanks so much! I really appreciate that comment about making you feel like your time isn't wasted, because I agonize over every cut to make sure it adds something or I just remove it. It takes a lot of time, but I think the final video is much better because of it. Cheers!
Thanks! The floppy disk would be a lot better if I found a better workflow to transfer software from microdrive to disk or Gotek. So that's still worth investigating.
I have 2 QLs, and have used them for a year when I was studying and didn't had a PC. I had a Sandy SuperQboard, that gave you 512 k, disk drive and centronics port... With the disk drive, I used the Xchange suite, that was a bundle of the four Psion Programs ready to be used as an unit. I agree than Minerva and Hermes are a must have, but I got a new 486 (1994), and i didn't got them. I also had a Z88, and transfered files to the PC and the QL...
In the switching power supply, the pulsed inductor coil is probably inducing via the variable magnetic field surrounding it a current in whatever other motherboard components it's adjacent to. I wonder if they are not using a shielded inductor. Since the linear regulator doesn't pulse an inductor, it doesn't generate a variable magnetic field.
That would make sense. I'm not a PSU expert, so I don't know those details. Other people pointed out that even the capacitors used were not good quality for interference-free applications, so you may be right about the lack of shielding on the inductor.
Thanks for another cool video. Since you're still figuring out the QL a bit, here are a few thoughts from someone who used to have one in the 80s and very early 90s. One thing you didn't show was that if you have a floppy drive, it'll try to run flp1_boot from floppy at power up. Also, there is a cool command called FLP_USE which lets you have the floppy drive masquerade as a microdrive, which is great for any software that was expecting to be run from Microdrive (although obviously it won't fake out any copy-protected software that relies on things like special bad sectors, etc.). Overall, a floppy disk upgrade is way easier than the SD-card microdrive emulation you showed last time (as cool as that is). Also, back in the day I had a pass-through 512K ram expansion. It did make the QL a bit longer, but it actually wasn't too unwieldy, and again it was much easier to install than pulling out the CPU. Finally, yes, Qptr (and the hotkey system!) is a total game changer for the user experience of the QL. I look forward to you showing that. Although these days it looks like it's become a bit of a rabbit hole of complexity as far as setting up “the best” environment, with different folks disagreeing. Back in the day, I stayed pretty close to the default setup that Qptr originally shipped with.
Thanks for the tips! I had figured out the boot part (but had to cut that to make the video a reasonable length), but I didn't know about FLP_USE. Very cool! I'm still shocked at the lack of disk images. I guess the correct path is to copy the .zip file to a disk image, and unzip it in the QL itself? It seems pretty cumbersome. Any recommendations of a good starting point for QPTR? 😃
Thanks for the video! This reminded me that I need to do deeper dive to QL software. I have the vDrive, but my gold card clone’s disk controller with a gotek seems to be a nicer solution. The video reminded me that I wanted to create a simple FPGA setup to capture the QL’s video and output it in VGA or HDMI. I could probably reuse some of the code my TI99/4A system uses on the ULX3S FPGA board for testing.
Glad you liked it, Erik. If there was more software available on disk images, I would agree with you. Either that or I need to figure out a more efficient way to pass it from microdrive it to disk. Then again, I suspect that once I look into HD emulators I won't be looking back. I have heard that the Gold Card is incompatible with the vDrive. Did you have that problem?
@@NoelsRetroLab to be honest I have to test more. Like I think I told at some point when I worked on my QL the MC68008 original CPU broke, and I’ve been running the gold card since. But I did order from eBay some 68008 processors which arrived a while back, need to test with those now that I may have working processor.
@@NoelsRetroLab Another possibility would be to communicate with the QL via its "Sinclair network" port (a 3.5mm jack connector at the back). Using a micro-controller, it should be possible to reverse-engineer that simple propriietary protocol, and upload binaries from your PC to the QL, like this: PC -> USB -> Arduino -> 3.5mm jack -> QL network port If you can hack something like this, from the PC point of view it would be like sending text to a USB serial modem, like : COPY myfile COM7: And from the QL point of view it might be as simple as a command like : COPY net1_ TO mdv1_myfile I hope someone will rise to this challenge (if not already hacked by somebody else).
Being in the US I don't have much nostalgia for Sinclair or the QL in particular, but you certainly do make informative/educational videos for those of us that did not see them in their prime. Keep up the good work!
It was probably inspired by the ZX Spectrum one since it comes from the same Sinclair branch. I makes sense on the Spectrum and its rubber keys, but on a computer with keyboard that has a better feel... I'm not sold yet 😃 And yes, I need to improve my disk workflow for sure.
If you'd loaded up Lightning you'd have much faster keyboard response that could bring out the repeating character problem on QLs. We had a JM dongled QL, later upgraded by Sinclair to a built in first gen JS ROM that had this problem. Dad's brought newer machines home from work sometimes if I was using the home QL for a school project, and these were fine.... -- Lightning works on top of Minerva. It has faster IO routines and a much faster screen driver. An internal RAM upgrade would have been good at the time. We had a 'Trump Card' (cut down version of the Gold Card).. This gave 768kb memory + disk interface, and Toolkit 2... Never had a mouse or QView / ICE which was disappointing as a kid, but dad was against Mickey Mouse operating systems.
@@NoelsRetroLab .. Hi Noel, interesting vid. My memory is a bit hazy but I think so. It worked with a Trump Card that had its own ROM extensions. I think the RAM part of the OS can be overwritten to point to functions in RAM instead of ROM... -- SpeedScreen was the less commercial version (that Lightning 'borrowed' a lot of code from). Lightning was either a digital precision or miracle systems product, speed screen was a one man job and the author held a small grudge! I don't blame him. -- You should test the 'high colour' modes if possible.. Sinclair QL dithvide.. May be new to some fans as it came (far too..) late,. Should have been implemented from day one... don't know if Dithvide works with Lightning but I wouldn't be surprised either way. Lightning was popular (by the QLs standards!). omega.webnode.com/products/product-2/ -- Glad you're benefiting from owning a QL - I just got the mick taken out of me at the time, as a kid! Programming was more stimulating than gaming so I didn't mind too much - and now the nostalgia is fun thanks to you and others on youtube. Cheers!
Wow, I never heard of Lightning back in my days. How sad I am discovering it now 30 years later. According to what I have now read, this was a must-have extension, just like Toolkit2 was. But didn´t Minerva already implement part of these improvements as well? Since Noel's ram expansion is internal and therefore slow, would it be a better upgrade for him to have Lightning as a ROM (faster) and load toolkit2 in RAM instead?
@@chirchir8126 .. Not sure about Minerva. I can't remember if I ditched Lightning. I only had the software version of Lightning.. Easy to test if you have a QL. Info is sketchy on the subject but just run Quill - it goes from stupidly slow (like it was written in basic) to nicely usable under Lightning... Noel didn't mention any speed improvement with Minerva.. It had TK2 compatibility + enhanced multitasking, networking, pipes, I know that much. -- I had a collection of all the extra OS commands I'd typed in from QL mags, in hex... Edlin$ (editable line at any screen coordinate) and Linus Torvald's GMove were cool, and the 3D block drawing command... Maybe 100 commands... The disk could be somewhere in my mother's loft but it's probably all available online.. -- The first thing I'd test if I could get a working QL setup together now-a-days would be Dithvide.. I presume it's not usable for arcade games without some very precise and concise assembly programming but for graphics adventures it would have been excellent... ST level, if not Amiga. If I'd have been 10 years older when the QL came out I'd have tried to write a Dithvide type screen driver. -- Damn shame quality game developers didn't get involved with the QL early on as those guys really exploit the full tech. capabilities, unlike say Psion (who's organisers were great), and their extremely slow, badly written, bloated, very limited Psion Software Suite (Quill, Abacus, Easel, Archive)... A bad showcase, though Psion QL Chess was excellent to be fair. -- Blocklands Warrior could have been a hit on every computer and phone, still going today.. Simple, frantic, high speed game that was pacman on a 2-way scrolling screen that you're always at the centre of (until you eventually get near the edges of the world), with much more to collect, keys and doors to find.. A very simple level designer added so much fun. You could make open plan levels, or mad mazes (that the monsters solved nastily well!).. You could edit the sprites with a sprite (or hex) editor... I've never been able to find a copy and the microdrive cartridge got corrupted... I should have made a version of it when smartphones took off or as soon as I got a PC and learned assembly..
Always love the videos! I was thinking on the ROM upgrade, perhaps add a switch to the jumper so you wont have to break into the case if you want to switch back and forth.
Thanks! Yes, a switch would work, although I would wait until you really need that. Do you have plans to toggle the Toolkit II with an external ROM? I don't know of any I'm dying to use instead at this moment. Edit: A more interesting switch would be one to toggle between the original ROM and Minerva. That would deal with any incompatibilities.
Hi Noel...got back to this video as someone on the QL's facebook page pointed to it for the RAM expansion. Question about the floppy drive...you said you got it out of an Amiga. I thought the Amiga floppies were wired differently and needed to have two lines swapped to work as PC floppies. Does the Kempston interface work with either?
Noel back in the day i used an emacs editor search and replace mdv1_ with flp1_ and most everything worked with floppy disk i had a miracle systems gold card which included both a ram expansion and a floppy disk interface i ran my business on a self written archive program which produced invoices and vat rerurns and did my planning on the spreadsheet you coul also emulate hard drives on hd floppy using win1_
Nice. And another commenter just told me about FLP_USE which makes flp1_ act as mdv1_ so maybe you don't even need to edit that? My biggest stumbling block os getting software on disk images. Most of it is zipped and it seems you can't unzip it on a PC, so you'd have to create a disk image, copy the zip file there, and then unzip it from the QL? Seems pretty inconvenient.
There are floppy controllers for the QL which will handle HD (and even ED) floppies. The ones integrated into the Gold Card and Super Gold Card do this.
Ah, good to know. I wasn't 100% sure, but that makes sense that it depends on the controller. I still need to get my hands on a Super Gold Card somehow 😃
Compile the test program, The Sinclair QL must read a batch file so put the command line instruction into the batch file, MC68000 assembly language files can be very large.
Yeah, me neither. But it was just a temporary solution to power the drive. A long-term solution would be an enclosure, or did you have something else in mind?
Two comments: - The internal RAM-upgrade uses a lower rated 68008 (8 MHz) when compared to the one that was installed (10 MHz). I don't think that the performance is different but I would still use the faster rated chip as long as possible. More importantly, the CPU socket on the expansion may have corrosion on some of the pins - they looked greenish in the video. Better check that. - The small Meanwell PSUs with 5V/12V are certainly great! They come with lower rated specs, too, and I just used one in a Commodore 1541 to make it less hot. The output voltages can be adjusted, too, but the small white pot affects both(!) voltages simultaneously. So you have to decide on "as best as possible" values. That's the only downside I found.
I had read about fast and slow RAM on qlforum, but never managed to get an exact idea of why it mattered. It's not like the CPU is halting until it gets a signal back from the RAM. Is it only in case of using faster CPUs? Good point about the pot affecting both Vouts! I didn't realize that. Thanks!
@@chirchir8126 You can pretty much always use a quicker CPU (same model but rated for a higher clock speed) - but that usually does NOT automatically result in a speed upgrade! For that to happen you'd need to increase the clock speed, too, which I doubt is the case here. Using a higher rated CPU may still result in slightly less operating temperatures & higher longevity, though (no guarantee on that but if I had to choose which CPU stays in the drawer I'd put the slower one in there...). If the clock speed stays the same the only way to get more speed is a change in CPU/computer architecture (optimizations, more cache memory, whatever). As an example, I once put a 68010/10Mhz into an Amiga 500. The Amiga still ran at its usual 7.x MHz clock but the slight architecture improvements of the 68010 resulted in a few percent more performance. It was measurable but not noticeable.
Wauu so useful video Noel, thank you. Just... where have you gotten those upgrades? ... about the QL specific regulator... so bad! also, where did you get it? in order to do not make the same mistake.
You're welcome! All those upgrades came with the QL that I bought from qlforum 😃The regulator was made by Tetroid, who also makes several other high-quality QL accessories, that's why I was doubly surprised.
I didn´t know that the Minerva ROM also included Toolkit2 ! That's an essential upgrade for a QL. One other advantage of having the toolkit2 internally is that it frees the ROM cartridge slot to connect something else (like a QL mouse that only needs the ROM port for power and connects to the joystick port). @Noel: maybe you want to use the power lines on the ROM cartridge at the back of the QL to power your Gotek floppy drive?
There was a Minerva board even with a real time clock on it! 😃 But yes, the Toolkit II seems great. Good idea about powering the Gotek from there by the way!
@@NoelsRetroLab The battery-backed clock was another classic upgrade for the QL. I was offered that in a shop back in my days, but I did not take it. Maybe you should do that in your next upgrade? We would be very interested in seeing it.
No 12V needed on 3.5" floppy drives. I never saw one that has the +12v line go to anything, just look on the PCB around the connector. So a USB connector and (non-aliexpress) 2A power supply will do fine.
That one did surprisingly (the only one I had around). It came out of an external Amiga drive. Maybe with older ones like this one it was more normal? Not sure.
I do not agree with Noel's negative judgment of Tetroid's voltage regulator (this with the red motherboard). I own 10 QLs (yes, 10) and in 8 of them I've exchanged the voltage regulator with the Tetroid's one. All of them work PERFECTLY, without any signal noise.
That's interesting. I've seen things like that happen with ZX Spectrums: Some work great with a TRACO Power and some don't. Any ideas what that might be related to? FWIW, other people who know more than I do about power supplies commented that the Tetroid one used components that were far from ideal for a clean PS, so it sounds like it could have been much better.
Hmm... I didn't think about it. I suspect I won't see anything in the 5V rail itself and the interference is affecting some other signal. It could be interesting to investigate further though. Good idea!
@@NoelsRetroLab I have a special soft spot for Calvin and Hobbes... I learned a lot of my Portuguese from them in the 80's! I think you've inspired me to print my own T's now...
well, when I first saw that QL POwer thing, I thought that its not great. You might want to design Switch Mode Power Supplies with really low ESR/Impedance Caps and perhaps a mixture of Ceramic and Polymer caps. To make matters worse, the used Teapo SC Caps used here are not that great and have rather high ESR, compared to better types such as Panasonic FM. Oh and of course an CLC Filter (Capacitor -> Inductor -> Capacitor)
Ah, that's super interesting to hear! I don't know much about power supply design, so I didn't realize that at first sight, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.
Was wondering if they skimped on cap quality, might work better if recapped with the kind you'd use when recapping motherboards... the name Rubycon springs to mind, but there are others. With no additional output filtering, it is extremely dependent on the ESR of the one output cap to control noise. A solid cap of the same capacitance (and 6.3V rating acceptable on the 5V output side) would likely improve things
@@matthewday7565 no, not necessarily. Its just too much of a hassle. Also Teapo isn't bad, its just that the SC Series is more for isolated PSU than for non isolated switch mode power supplies, which nowadys tend to use Polymer capacitors due to the very low impedance. YOu can't just replace a bulged Nippon Chemicon KZG with a Rubycon YXF! There is way more to capacitor than the almost 100 year old claim that only voltage and capacity is what counts. Thats some knowledge when there was no "capacitor" - they were called Condenser!! Today the capacity is not that important, the other factors like Impedance and ripple current is way more important than capacity!
@@NoelsRetroLab I think somethings over heating, but I can't fimd it. The QL works fine for about 5 mins, then crashes and wont power up for a while. I've had the thermal imaging camera on it, but it looks fine. I've recaped it and replaced the 7805. I even put new ROMs in just in case they were faulty. So I stopped and went onto other projects.
Hi Noel, did you wrote the 720Kb DD-images to a 1.44MB Gotek or is it a 720Kb Gotek? Or does the software (HCX?) support 720KB-Images in a 1.44MB image? (the only Gotek I did buy since today is the USB-Version for booting DOS-Disks on PCs with only USB = GOTEK UFA1M44-100 )
Hi Guido, I didn't get in details there because I was already over time 😃I used the latest FlashFloppy with a regular Gotek (1.44MB). I had to copy a couple of config files, but I'm not 100% they were needed (search in qlforum). Worked like a charm.
I couldn't find any definite information, but is the Hermes basically another MCS-48 (8049, 8050, &c.) with a different ROM, or something else that's pin-compatible?
Good question. I did some digging just now and it looks like it's another Intel microcontroller (D8749H), so very similar. Too bad the 8049 couldn't be reprogrammed!
That's a great idea, especially if disk images were more useful with the QL. I suspect that as soon as I start looking into HD emulators, I won't have a need for disk emulators anymore 😃
Digital Precision published a MS-DOS emulator for the QL called PC-Conqueror. Floppy disk only. It worked but by all accounts was S-L-O-W. I don't know if it was much better a faster QL.
@@thomasrotweiler Yup, it's definitely slow. I recently tried it out on an unaccelerated QL and played with some CGA MS-DOS games. I was able to run an old version of WordPerfect and it actually ran decently for that (i.e. you could actually edit a document and not find it unusably slow). It was pretty compatible though so a nice bit of programming. Mine ran on 512K of memory. I'm working on trying to create a small working disk image on a floppy that Conqueror can create because then I can move it to the Q68 and I'm guessing it would run very well there.
It's from the video where I did some BASIC benchmarking th-cam.com/video/H05hM_Guoqk/w-d-xo.html The actual chart can be found here docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bfWSR2Ngy1RPedS6j-M607eeAhsd40-nhAfswILzzS8/edit#gid=22692068
@@NoelsRetroLab Since you now have Toolkit2, the other key software tools that you still need are: QLIBERATOR (Superbasic compiler) and the SUPERSPRITE Digital Precision library. With this combination (Toolkit2+SuperSprite+Qliberator) you could easily produce some nice game or utility that will multitasking happily along other apps. However, I am not sure if Supersprite works with too much memory installed. Also a C compiler for the QL would be nice to have.
@@NoelsRetroLab the dual screens you mentionned are meant to allow flipping 2 screens for double buffering, essential effect for games (and it was used by some professionally made videogames for the QL). The problem arose from the fact that originally the QL supported such double buffering by hardware but not with Superbasic running, because the system used memory positions just where the second screen is located. Thus the need for the Minerva to support dual screens through some memory relocation hack, so that the system no more prevents the use of the second screen. The Minerva manual explains how to use the MODE command to redirect graphic routines to whichever screen you want to draw onto. BTW, I did not know Minerva but now read its manual: unbelievable amount of work! These guys were geniuses!
It would be interesting to see the speed results normalized to a fixed clock speed, say 1 MHz. So, the Apple ][+ (6502 @ 1 MHz) would still have a score of 36, but the IBM PC clone (8088 @ 4.77 MHz), would get a score of (34 x (4.77/1) = 162.18, or 162 rounded to the nearest second). Likewise, if we take the ZX-Spectrum Next (Z80? @ 28 MHz) and slow it down to 1 MHz, it would get a score of (12 x * (28/1) = 336) seconds. 🙂
Fixed speed comparisons make more sense for similar architectures (some Intel processors for example), but as soon as you start comparing things like a 6502 and a Z80, it's extremely unfair to look at them with the same clock speed due to how they were designed.
@@NoelsRetroLab - The other problem is eliminating (or accounting for) unknown inefficiencies in the implementations of the BASIC interpreters used. Even if one codes the loop in assembler, you’ve got some processors that only have 8/8 (8-bit registers/8-bit data bus), but others may have 16/8, or even 16/16. Still, it would be interesting to make the calculations, then over/under-clock them so the all run at 1 MHz and see how close the timings match the predicted values. Of course, you’d probably have to modify the programs to talk to some (simple) hardware to time it, since the displays for most of the machines listed rely on the system clock to sync with the monitor (video display), with the clock speed off, the display would be all wonky (or the monitor might turn off, unable to match the sync pulses.) Still, you’ll have to find the highest speed at which all the CPUs will run without burning up, or giving unreliable results, due to the change in clock speed.
Sure, but sometimes devices made specifically for a computer and tweak things for that hardware in particular, that's why I was expecting it to outperform the other regulators. Besides, the TRACO one sometimes introduces noise in the ZX Spectrum video, so it's not perfect in general, but here it was great.
@@NoelsRetroLab Any form of linear power supply will dissipate the higher voltage through heat, the wattage of which can be roughly calculated as P_th = (Vin-Vout)*A for the pass transistor/regulator. For computers in general, most often a switchmode supply is the better option, and you can add extra filtering caps to the output to reduce ripple.
@@n33d4killz Is it true that switching regulators die faster than the (less efficient) linear regulators? Clearly these ones have lasted 30 years so far. You know what they say in computers: "if it works, don't fix it!".
@@chirchir8126 I don't think so, switchmode supplies in theory should last longer, since they don't generate nearly as much heat as linear regulators, and thus won't suffer from overheating or life-shortening from running hot. It's likely most switchmode supplies that fail are because they use cheap capacitors.
@@chirchir8126 It really comes down to initial manufacture quality. Linear regulators are much simpler designs, though the heat created will shorten their life. Meanwhile, a switching regulator should experience less heating, though there are more internal components that could potentially fail. Switching regulators have come a long way since the 80s in terms of efficiency and reliability, so I wouldn't be surprised if a modern one would last longer than a similar vintage one.
QL was too advanced to its time. Clive Sinclair and Gary Kildall were pioneers were visionaries that bet on Unix to get nice OS´s that were too advanced to their time.
As a teen I wrote some commercial software for the QL which later helped fund my university course, much love for it, but that’s the first time I’ve ever seen inside one. Love the channel.
Kudus to one of the most underrated retro channels on YT! I've never had any of those machines (the 80's in Brazil were complicated and we mostly had clones of Z81/85, MSX, and Apple2 ) but what fascinates me even today is that in those days one could literally dig into those machines and really tinker with them as they mostly used parts that could be found on the market, the hardware and software were simple and a person could completely dominate both. Nowadays there's a lot of things you can play with but it's another level of complexity and makes that kind of hacks harder to do.
Thanks! And I completely agree. That's what's so fascinating about retro computers!
Retro computers are the best way to learn and understand computers. Todays' PC's and MAC's do way too much hand holding and restricting to the user. No fun there at all.
These '80s microcomputers could be completely understood by a person, both hardware and software. That is part of the appeal. These machines also have personality, unlike the PCs of today. Every one is unique.
@@Starchface You actually had to understand what a computer is and how it works. It's also how many of use learned how to code and many getting lucrative careers! This is completely lost on todays machines.
A new Noel video is an instant must watch.
And then it is about the QL, clicking even faster!
Thanks, man!
Agree with this!
Another quality video from a likeable personality. Too many channels just have one or the other.
Glad you enjoy it!
Haha, someone's been producing the internal RAM upgrade I designed, didn't expect to see that :)
Haha, that's funny! You didn't make that one? I bought this QL and the upgrades from a user in qlforum. I figured they had gotten it from you back when you designed it?
Any hint on where/how to get one?
The QL was ahead of its time... so are the upgrades. Thanks for trying them out.
You're welcome. Yes, the QL is a super-interesting system with a lot of depth to it.
I had an original 512Kbytes memory upgrade, and it was great to work with it.
What was the big benefit from you back then? Larger docs to work with, or was there something else unique about it?
@@NoelsRetroLab Larger docs mainly, but also I discovered much later that it seems that the QL uses overlays to make better use of the memory, and doing overlays over the microdrive... well, imagine :-D That explains why I was so happy with the QL while other people hated it: mine was fast :-D
Also, I think (not sure) that the expanded memory wasn't contended, which means that running code in it would be much faster. But this is pure speculation.
@@rastersoft I guess you are refering to slave blocks (QDOS using all free memory for disk caching).
@@rastersoft nice, sounds like some kind of protect mode, to allows multithreading, something similar with OS/2, without enough memory that was a hell, but with enough memory that was so smooth and nice OS
I've been interested in getting a QL for many years. I didn't realise there's so many different modern upgrades for it. A very informative video - thank you!
Sadly, with today's CPUs, the best upgrade for the QL is running it inside a Windows emulator (like QPC2) at blistering speeds and with insane amounts of memory and video resolutions.
@@chirchir8126 I've nothing against emulation or FPGAs, but to say I've already got a fair few different machines I've pimped out, I've nothing against doing it with a QL.
Thanks! Yes, it's a very upgradable and very interesting system!
I think what @chir chir is saying is that the QL Pointer environment has evolved to the point that it runs best on emulators than on the machines themselves, which is kind of crazy, but it's a possible path for the evolution of the OS.
An Amiga drive working with a QL, I wouldn't have thought that was possible! Great work ctesting the upgrades (that key click sound would drive me nuts too) & restoring the computers :-)
Thanks! 👍
I have an identical drive; I bought & used it with PCs only! :) I think only Macs have an incompatible floppy drive. Perhaps also SparcStations which had floppy drives with motorized eject. Oh and I should also say "Good work, Noel!" I don't find it easy to test carefully, so I admire your work.
OK, I finally had the time to watch the video. Just a few comments: :-)
Running MultiBasic: you just have to execute the "multib_obj" executable from the Minerva supplement disc. It has nothing to do with the second screen (though I guess you could move one to it), see the small chapter in the manual about it.
The second screen in general didn't experience much use, so software support stayed very limited. Though a version of the pointer interface that uses it would be fun... hmm, maybe another day.
Voltage regulator: I guess the noise would not be visible on the RGB output, so most people wouldn't notice. My QL_VGA RGB to VGA converter is currently available on SellMyRetro
RAM upgrade: The 68008 can only address 1MB of memory, so with a few tricks 896kb of RAM is the maximum for a stock QL. The GoldCard with its 68000 has 2MB and the ultimate upgrade, the 68020 SuperGoldCard, has 4MB. I recommend the SGC if you can get your hands on one...
The CPU in the QL is heavily slowed down because the video circuitry has priority access to the RAM. This type of RAM upgrade near the CPU or in the expansion slot does not suffer from this, so the QL will actually be faster.
Other than the GoldCards there is only one HD capable floppy controller. It includes a Mouse interface (for Atari style bus mice) and I open sourced it a while ago here: www.kilgus.net/ql/herbert-card/
Floppys, for most years, were THE medium for the QL, most people upgraded to them and left the Microdrives behind. But floppy images never caught on in the QL world, it's all ZIP archives. Just extract them onto a floppy image in your favourite emulator if you want to have images.
Thanks for the comments. That makes a lot of sense. About the regulator: The video you were seeing was coming out of the RGB output (both on my TV and fed into the capture card had the same effect), so it's definitely being affected.
Really enjoying these QL videos! It inspires me to get mine out and start playing around with it :-) Please don't stop what you're doing!!! Some channels start off like yours and then begin to change and lose focus on what made them so interesting in the first place.
Glad you like them! I'm making videos exactly about what I enjoy doing/learning/sharing, so I don't expect to change any time soon 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab Glad to hear it :-)
Back in the day - late 80s / early 90s QL software publishers provided software on microdrives, 5.25" floppies and 3.5" floppies. A lot of the original software media got over-written when people finished using the original programs, so not very much has survived - it's very rare to see second user QL software on floppies these days. Minerva ROMs were quite popular, I had several as they kept on updating them. And a couple of spare QL ROMs JM / JS / AH - you needed to check so much for compatibility issues. Internal RAM upgrades were good, but having an external one on a card meant you could remove it if the extra RAM caused compatibility issues. There were hard drives and interfaces available for the QL from Miracle Systems (and possibly other suppliers) but I could never afford one. Be interesting to see a working QL plus hard drive (or SSD) .
That makes a lot of sense. I didn't realize that RAM upgrades could cause compatibility issues! That's pretty bad! I have the feeling that a QL with an HDD emulator is the end game of this machine 😃
I really didn't think that the QL had so much support, let alone so many nice upgrades. It appears that I underestimated the QL support.
Agreed. And I'm only starting to scratch the surface. You can get Gold Cards, Trump Cards, fancier expansions, hard drives... It's a really upgradeable system!
@@NoelsRetroLab After looking at the cost of the clone Super Gold Cards, it would be nice if something similar to the Next, using the QL format was produced in an FPGA that could either replace the existing motherboard completely, or be produced in a modern case like the Next. Unfortunately I imagine cost and lesser demand will dictate it never sees the light of day.
Then again, one could take the N-Go board, add the QL core, and try doing it that way, as expect interfacing with the old QL keyboard would take some work.
@@stephenvalente3296 There is a QL core for the MISTER. There is work going on to have a QL core for the Next. There is also Q68 which fits the whole QL hardware into a much smaller board. The Raspberry Pi 400 can also host a QL running on Java. I'd post links but youtube has a habit of deleting anything with links. Your search engine should find them. For more QL information check out : Dilwyn Jones Sinclair QL Pages .
@@stephenvalente3296 I recommend the Q68 which is basically the QL's version of the Spectrum Next (sans kickstarter). I did a video on it in early February and you can see it running Black Phoenix which is a collection of GUI elements of the Pointer Environment that makes it look like a Mac. The Q68 is pretty reasonably priced (around $200) and runs about 23x faster than a stock QL and comes with VGA, Ethernet, and dual SD cards. I'm working on designing a Rick Dickinson style case for it to make it even more like the Spectrum Next :-)
@@8BitRetroJournal I seem to recall coming across this a while back. Will check it out again. Thanks.
Thumbs up, already subscribed. I'm perpetually interested when you find things that don't work as expected - you save us a lot of grief. Thank you! Also, thank you for the smooth flow of your videos. I never feel like a minute is wasted.
Thanks so much! I really appreciate that comment about making you feel like your time isn't wasted, because I agonize over every cut to make sure it adds something or I just remove it. It takes a lot of time, but I think the final video is much better because of it. Cheers!
Great, thorough video Noel. Thanks. So I think that's a ; skip the floppy...
Thanks! The floppy disk would be a lot better if I found a better workflow to transfer software from microdrive to disk or Gotek. So that's still worth investigating.
I have 2 QLs, and have used them for a year when I was studying and didn't had a PC. I had a Sandy SuperQboard, that gave you 512 k, disk drive and centronics port...
With the disk drive, I used the Xchange suite, that was a bundle of the four Psion Programs ready to be used as an unit.
I agree than Minerva and Hermes are a must have, but I got a new 486 (1994), and i didn't got them.
I also had a Z88, and transfered files to the PC and the QL...
In the switching power supply, the pulsed inductor coil is probably inducing via the variable magnetic field surrounding it a current in whatever other motherboard components it's adjacent to. I wonder if they are not using a shielded inductor. Since the linear regulator doesn't pulse an inductor, it doesn't generate a variable magnetic field.
That would make sense. I'm not a PSU expert, so I don't know those details. Other people pointed out that even the capacitors used were not good quality for interference-free applications, so you may be right about the lack of shielding on the inductor.
glad to see your channel growing!
Thank you!
sweet!.. the QL is a nice retro system for new upgrades!
It sure is! Much more upgradable than other systems.
@@NoelsRetroLab ...you need to do them all for the CPC Noel! :P
Great video! as usual! I still have one QL in my queue to be done ... waiting for 2 years so far .... eeeh, like many others.
Thank you! It's a really fun computer. Definitely get one when you get a chance.
@@NoelsRetroLab I have it already :D it is waiting in a queue as I've written :D
Thanks for another cool video. Since you're still figuring out the QL a bit, here are a few thoughts from someone who used to have one in the 80s and very early 90s.
One thing you didn't show was that if you have a floppy drive, it'll try to run flp1_boot from floppy at power up. Also, there is a cool command called FLP_USE which lets you have the floppy drive masquerade as a microdrive, which is great for any software that was expecting to be run from Microdrive (although obviously it won't fake out any copy-protected software that relies on things like special bad sectors, etc.). Overall, a floppy disk upgrade is way easier than the SD-card microdrive emulation you showed last time (as cool as that is).
Also, back in the day I had a pass-through 512K ram expansion. It did make the QL a bit longer, but it actually wasn't too unwieldy, and again it was much easier to install than pulling out the CPU.
Finally, yes, Qptr (and the hotkey system!) is a total game changer for the user experience of the QL. I look forward to you showing that. Although these days it looks like it's become a bit of a rabbit hole of complexity as far as setting up “the best” environment, with different folks disagreeing. Back in the day, I stayed pretty close to the default setup that Qptr originally shipped with.
Thanks for the tips! I had figured out the boot part (but had to cut that to make the video a reasonable length), but I didn't know about FLP_USE. Very cool! I'm still shocked at the lack of disk images. I guess the correct path is to copy the .zip file to a disk image, and unzip it in the QL itself? It seems pretty cumbersome.
Any recommendations of a good starting point for QPTR? 😃
Thanks for the video! This reminded me that I need to do deeper dive to QL software. I have the vDrive, but my gold card clone’s disk controller with a gotek seems to be a nicer solution. The video reminded me that I wanted to create a simple FPGA setup to capture the QL’s video and output it in VGA or HDMI. I could probably reuse some of the code my TI99/4A system uses on the ULX3S FPGA board for testing.
Glad you liked it, Erik. If there was more software available on disk images, I would agree with you. Either that or I need to figure out a more efficient way to pass it from microdrive it to disk. Then again, I suspect that once I look into HD emulators I won't be looking back.
I have heard that the Gold Card is incompatible with the vDrive. Did you have that problem?
@@NoelsRetroLab to be honest I have to test more. Like I think I told at some point when I worked on my QL the MC68008 original CPU broke, and I’ve been running the gold card since. But I did order from eBay some 68008 processors which arrived a while back, need to test with those now that I may have working processor.
@@NoelsRetroLab Another possibility would be to communicate with the QL via its "Sinclair network" port (a 3.5mm jack connector at the back). Using a micro-controller, it should be possible to reverse-engineer that simple propriietary protocol, and upload binaries from your PC to the QL, like this:
PC -> USB -> Arduino -> 3.5mm jack -> QL network port
If you can hack something like this, from the PC point of view it would be like sending text to a USB serial modem, like :
COPY myfile COM7:
And from the QL point of view it might be as simple as a command like :
COPY net1_ TO mdv1_myfile
I hope someone will rise to this challenge (if not already hacked by somebody else).
I m trying to restore a QL, thx for the info.
Being in the US I don't have much nostalgia for Sinclair or the QL in particular, but you certainly do make informative/educational videos for those of us that did not see them in their prime. Keep up the good work!
I'm really glad to hear that! Thanks for the feedback!
The ql power has massive copper traces!
They are likely acting as an antenna broadcasting the switching frequency
Oh good point! I didn't think of it that way, but youre right and that probably contributes to the video noise.
The keyclick is like that of the Atari 8-bit. It's a useful thing to have.
Now you need a utility program to copy all the microdrive data to floppy.
It was probably inspired by the ZX Spectrum one since it comes from the same Sinclair branch. I makes sense on the Spectrum and its rubber keys, but on a computer with keyboard that has a better feel... I'm not sold yet 😃
And yes, I need to improve my disk workflow for sure.
If you'd loaded up Lightning you'd have much faster keyboard response that could bring out the repeating character problem on QLs. We had a JM dongled QL, later upgraded by Sinclair to a built in first gen JS ROM that had this problem. Dad's brought newer machines home from work sometimes if I was using the home QL for a school project, and these were fine....
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Lightning works on top of Minerva. It has faster IO routines and a much faster screen driver. An internal RAM upgrade would have been good at the time. We had a 'Trump Card' (cut down version of the Gold Card).. This gave 768kb memory + disk interface, and Toolkit 2... Never had a mouse or QView / ICE which was disappointing as a kid, but dad was against Mickey Mouse operating systems.
Oh interesting! I didn't know about Lightning. Can it be combined with Minerva?
@@NoelsRetroLab .. Hi Noel, interesting vid. My memory is a bit hazy but I think so. It worked with a Trump Card that had its own ROM extensions. I think the RAM part of the OS can be overwritten to point to functions in RAM instead of ROM...
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SpeedScreen was the less commercial version (that Lightning 'borrowed' a lot of code from). Lightning was either a digital precision or miracle systems product, speed screen was a one man job and the author held a small grudge! I don't blame him.
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You should test the 'high colour' modes if possible.. Sinclair QL dithvide.. May be new to some fans as it came (far too..) late,. Should have been implemented from day one... don't know if Dithvide works with Lightning but I wouldn't be surprised either way. Lightning was popular (by the QLs standards!).
omega.webnode.com/products/product-2/
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Glad you're benefiting from owning a QL - I just got the mick taken out of me at the time, as a kid! Programming was more stimulating than gaming so I didn't mind too much - and now the nostalgia is fun thanks to you and others on youtube. Cheers!
Wow, I never heard of Lightning back in my days. How sad I am discovering it now 30 years later. According to what I have now read, this was a must-have extension, just like Toolkit2 was. But didn´t Minerva already implement part of these improvements as well?
Since Noel's ram expansion is internal and therefore slow, would it be a better upgrade for him to have Lightning as a ROM (faster) and load toolkit2 in RAM instead?
@@chirchir8126 .. Not sure about Minerva. I can't remember if I ditched Lightning. I only had the software version of Lightning.. Easy to test if you have a QL. Info is sketchy on the subject but just run Quill - it goes from stupidly slow (like it was written in basic) to nicely usable under Lightning... Noel didn't mention any speed improvement with Minerva.. It had TK2 compatibility + enhanced multitasking, networking, pipes, I know that much.
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I had a collection of all the extra OS commands I'd typed in from QL mags, in hex... Edlin$ (editable line at any screen coordinate) and Linus Torvald's GMove were cool, and the 3D block drawing command... Maybe 100 commands... The disk could be somewhere in my mother's loft but it's probably all available online..
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The first thing I'd test if I could get a working QL setup together now-a-days would be Dithvide.. I presume it's not usable for arcade games without some very precise and concise assembly programming but for graphics adventures it would have been excellent... ST level, if not Amiga. If I'd have been 10 years older when the QL came out I'd have tried to write a Dithvide type screen driver.
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Damn shame quality game developers didn't get involved with the QL early on as those guys really exploit the full tech. capabilities, unlike say Psion (who's organisers were great), and their extremely slow, badly written, bloated, very limited Psion Software Suite (Quill, Abacus, Easel, Archive)... A bad showcase, though Psion QL Chess was excellent to be fair.
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Blocklands Warrior could have been a hit on every computer and phone, still going today.. Simple, frantic, high speed game that was pacman on a 2-way scrolling screen that you're always at the centre of (until you eventually get near the edges of the world), with much more to collect, keys and doors to find.. A very simple level designer added so much fun. You could make open plan levels, or mad mazes (that the monsters solved nastily well!).. You could edit the sprites with a sprite (or hex) editor... I've never been able to find a copy and the microdrive cartridge got corrupted... I should have made a version of it when smartphones took off or as soon as I got a PC and learned assembly..
Always love the videos! I was thinking on the ROM upgrade, perhaps add a switch to the jumper so you wont have to break into the case if you want to switch back and forth.
You can get ROM switchers for the QL from Sell My Retro website.
@@thomasrotweiler Well the board he had uses a jumper...all he needs to do is use a switch on that jumper instead.
Thanks! Yes, a switch would work, although I would wait until you really need that. Do you have plans to toggle the Toolkit II with an external ROM? I don't know of any I'm dying to use instead at this moment.
Edit: A more interesting switch would be one to toggle between the original ROM and Minerva. That would deal with any incompatibilities.
@@NoelsRetroLab I'm sure it's possible. Perhaps use that last 16k for the original rom if it's large enough.
Hi Noel, Could you post the site where to get the PCB for RAM expansion? or where to buy it. Thanks again :)
Hi Noel...got back to this video as someone on the QL's facebook page pointed to it for the RAM expansion. Question about the floppy drive...you said you got it out of an Amiga. I thought the Amiga floppies were wired differently and needed to have two lines swapped to work as PC floppies. Does the Kempston interface work with either?
Noel back in the day i used an emacs editor search and replace mdv1_ with flp1_ and most everything worked with floppy disk i had a miracle systems gold card which included both a ram expansion and a floppy disk interface i ran my business on a self written archive program which produced invoices and vat rerurns and did my planning on the spreadsheet
you coul also emulate hard drives on hd floppy using win1_
Nice. And another commenter just told me about FLP_USE which makes flp1_ act as mdv1_ so maybe you don't even need to edit that? My biggest stumbling block os getting software on disk images. Most of it is zipped and it seems you can't unzip it on a PC, so you'd have to create a disk image, copy the zip file there, and then unzip it from the QL? Seems pretty inconvenient.
There are floppy controllers for the QL which will handle HD (and even ED) floppies. The ones integrated into the Gold Card and Super Gold Card do this.
Ah, good to know. I wasn't 100% sure, but that makes sense that it depends on the controller. I still need to get my hands on a Super Gold Card somehow 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab Tetroid periodically makes runs of new clones of the Super Gold Card. Original ones are extremely difficult to come by.
I don't think 3.5 in floppy drives use the 12 v. So you could use the USB cable for those as well.
Nice upgrades =D
Woohoo, you hit that 16K RAM pack level :-)
At first I didn't know what you were talking about. Then 🎉🎉🎉 😃
Compile the test program, The Sinclair QL must read a batch file so put the command line instruction into the batch file, MC68000 assembly language files can be very large.
Always interesting videos. I really don't like the live terminals to mains supply left on the PSU as you are testing the drive.
Yeah, me neither. But it was just a temporary solution to power the drive. A long-term solution would be an enclosure, or did you have something else in mind?
Its community that kept QL alive, much like Amiga after CBM death
The 68008 has 20 address lines so it can hold only 1MB
For more RAM you need to change the CPU to a complete 68000 or do some
bank switching
True! That's probably why higher-capacity RAM expansions come with a CPU replacement (68K) at the same time.
Two comments:
- The internal RAM-upgrade uses a lower rated 68008 (8 MHz) when compared to the one that was installed (10 MHz).
I don't think that the performance is different but I would still use the faster rated chip as long as possible.
More importantly, the CPU socket on the expansion may have corrosion on some of the pins - they looked greenish in the video. Better check that.
- The small Meanwell PSUs with 5V/12V are certainly great! They come with lower rated specs, too, and I just used one in a Commodore 1541 to make it less hot.
The output voltages can be adjusted, too, but the small white pot affects both(!) voltages simultaneously. So you have to decide on "as best as possible" values.
That's the only downside I found.
I had read about fast and slow RAM on qlforum, but never managed to get an exact idea of why it mattered. It's not like the CPU is halting until it gets a signal back from the RAM. Is it only in case of using faster CPUs?
Good point about the pot affecting both Vouts! I didn't realize that. Thanks!
I didn´t know you could upgrade the QL's CPU to 10Mhz (not much, but still nice). So Noel's QL contained another upgrade he did not tell us? :-)
@@chirchir8126 You can pretty much always use a quicker CPU (same model but rated for a higher clock speed) - but that usually does NOT automatically result in a speed upgrade!
For that to happen you'd need to increase the clock speed, too, which I doubt is the case here.
Using a higher rated CPU may still result in slightly less operating temperatures & higher longevity, though (no guarantee on that but if I had to choose which CPU stays in the drawer I'd put the slower one in there...).
If the clock speed stays the same the only way to get more speed is a change in CPU/computer architecture (optimizations, more cache memory, whatever).
As an example, I once put a 68010/10Mhz into an Amiga 500. The Amiga still ran at its usual 7.x MHz clock but the slight architecture improvements of the 68010 resulted in a few percent more performance. It was measurable but not noticeable.
@@NoelsRetroLab Sorry, don't know about the RAM situation in the QL.
@@oldguy9051 @Noel's Retro Lab : now you will have to mod the standard QL mobo to overlock to 10Mhz. It should be easy for you in your next video. :-)
Wauu so useful video Noel, thank you. Just... where have you gotten those upgrades? ... about the QL specific regulator... so bad! also, where did you get it? in order to do not make the same mistake.
You're welcome! All those upgrades came with the QL that I bought from qlforum 😃The regulator was made by Tetroid, who also makes several other high-quality QL accessories, that's why I was doubly surprised.
@@NoelsRetroLab Maybe it was just a bad capacitor? perhaps checking it out with an oscilloscope ...
I didn´t know that the Minerva ROM also included Toolkit2 ! That's an essential upgrade for a QL. One other advantage of having the toolkit2 internally is that it frees the ROM cartridge slot to connect something else (like a QL mouse that only needs the ROM port for power and connects to the joystick port). @Noel: maybe you want to use the power lines on the ROM cartridge at the back of the QL to power your Gotek floppy drive?
There was a Minerva board even with a real time clock on it! 😃 But yes, the Toolkit II seems great. Good idea about powering the Gotek from there by the way!
@@NoelsRetroLab The battery-backed clock was another classic upgrade for the QL. I was offered that in a shop back in my days, but I did not take it. Maybe you should do that in your next upgrade? We would be very interested in seeing it.
@@NoelsRetroLab BTW, is there a Minerva ROM compatible with the spanish QL keyboard? It´s quite an important detail to fix.
That pointer environment looked interesting. Was it part of the linage of Windows and other GUIs or was it some weird side branch of their evolution?
No, I believe that was completely unrelated. I'm hoping to go into that at some point.
No 12V needed on 3.5" floppy drives. I never saw one that has the +12v line go to anything, just look on the PCB around the connector. So a USB connector and (non-aliexpress) 2A power supply will do fine.
That one did surprisingly (the only one I had around). It came out of an external Amiga drive. Maybe with older ones like this one it was more normal? Not sure.
@@NoelsRetroLab Ok, might be that some old DD drives still use 12V. Never saw it myself, but i guess most drives i had my hands on were HD.
I had a 5V only floppy drive found after a long search for my Beta interface (zx spectrum)
Yes, those would be ideal, wouldn't they? You can power them directly from the computer. I should look for one like that too.
I do not agree with Noel's negative judgment of Tetroid's voltage regulator (this with the red motherboard). I own 10 QLs (yes, 10) and in 8 of them I've exchanged the voltage regulator with the Tetroid's one. All of them work PERFECTLY, without any signal noise.
That's interesting. I've seen things like that happen with ZX Spectrums: Some work great with a TRACO Power and some don't. Any ideas what that might be related to? FWIW, other people who know more than I do about power supplies commented that the Tetroid one used components that were far from ideal for a clean PS, so it sounds like it could have been much better.
I wonder if the "Ramoth" on the 512K expansion means the creator is a Dragonriders of Pen fan. Ramoth is Lessa's dragon.
I *knew* it sounded familiar, but I couldn't place that name! It's been a loooooong time since I read it. 😃
I recently re-read the Anne McCaffrey Pern books recently, well up to Dragon Drums...
Scope the QLpower regulator? Would be curious to see what the noise it produces looks like.
Hmm... I didn't think about it. I suspect I won't see anything in the 5V rail itself and the interference is affecting some other signal. It could be interesting to investigate further though. Good idea!
That small chip on the top left of the 512K RAM board looks like it might be a seperate parity memory chip.
Do you have a source for that 512k internal memory expansion? I'm not finding it anywhere, thanks.
Nice makes me want a QL
Never too late! 😃
1:53 Amstrad CPC - 27sek, BUT add in basic 1 defint i,j - and result is 23,6
They should've called it the Sinclair ET, for Eight/Thirty-two. =)
ooooh nice bootlegged C&H T-shirt!!
You could argue that 90% of my t-shirts are bootleg 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab I have a special soft spot for Calvin and Hobbes... I learned a lot of my Portuguese from them in the 80's! I think you've inspired me to print my own T's now...
well, when I first saw that QL POwer thing, I thought that its not great.
You might want to design Switch Mode Power Supplies with really low ESR/Impedance Caps and perhaps a mixture of Ceramic and Polymer caps.
To make matters worse, the used Teapo SC Caps used here are not that great and have rather high ESR, compared to better types such as Panasonic FM.
Oh and of course an CLC Filter (Capacitor -> Inductor -> Capacitor)
Ah, that's super interesting to hear! I don't know much about power supply design, so I didn't realize that at first sight, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.
Was wondering if they skimped on cap quality, might work better if recapped with the kind you'd use when recapping motherboards... the name Rubycon springs to mind, but there are others.
With no additional output filtering, it is extremely dependent on the ESR of the one output cap to control noise.
A solid cap of the same capacitance (and 6.3V rating acceptable on the 5V output side) would likely improve things
@@matthewday7565 no, not necessarily.
Its just too much of a hassle. Also Teapo isn't bad, its just that the SC Series is more for isolated PSU than for non isolated switch mode power supplies, which nowadys tend to use Polymer capacitors due to the very low impedance.
YOu can't just replace a bulged Nippon Chemicon KZG with a Rubycon YXF!
There is way more to capacitor than the almost 100 year old claim that only voltage and capacity is what counts. Thats some knowledge when there was no "capacitor" - they were called Condenser!! Today the capacity is not that important, the other factors like Impedance and ripple current is way more important than capacity!
If the QL Drives become reliable then it is time to replace them with a hard drive and copy the QL OS+applications onto the hard drive.
I'm glad I stopped trying to fix my QL, With all these upgrades available I would be bankrupt in a week. LOL.
That's not an excuse to stop fixing it! 😃 What's the matter with it anyway?
@@NoelsRetroLab I think somethings over heating, but I can't fimd it. The QL works fine for about 5 mins, then crashes and wont power up for a while. I've had the thermal imaging camera on it, but it looks fine. I've recaped it and replaced the 7805. I even put new ROMs in just in case they were faulty. So I stopped and went onto other projects.
Ich finde, das die Super Gold Card zusammen mit dem VDrive die optimale Erweiterung ist.
Since you mentioned that the next step was hard disks is there a hard disk interface that you recommend?
Not yet. I haven't researched that far 😃 So far I've learned about the QL-SD which sounds great, but nothing beyond that.
Hi Noel,
did you wrote the 720Kb DD-images to a 1.44MB Gotek or is it a 720Kb Gotek?
Or does the software (HCX?) support 720KB-Images in a 1.44MB image?
(the only Gotek I did buy since today is the USB-Version for booting DOS-Disks on PCs with only USB = GOTEK UFA1M44-100 )
Hi Guido, I didn't get in details there because I was already over time 😃I used the latest FlashFloppy with a regular Gotek (1.44MB). I had to copy a couple of config files, but I'm not 100% they were needed (search in qlforum). Worked like a charm.
@@NoelsRetroLab Another thing you need to install is a RAMDISK for QDOS. It can be useful with the memory you have now.
I hope the minifigure the floppy controller fell on is OK. 🙂
Yeah, the other one was able to pull him out and he was fine 😃
I couldn't find any definite information, but is the Hermes basically another MCS-48 (8049, 8050, &c.) with a different ROM, or something else that's pin-compatible?
Good question. I did some digging just now and it looks like it's another Intel microcontroller (D8749H), so very similar. Too bad the 8049 couldn't be reprogrammed!
@@NoelsRetroLab Could a modern micro-controller (like Pico raspberry) be programmed to replace the 8049 ?
can use a sony mpf920 which is 5v only
Do you think it's possible to get a full 68000 to work in a QL?
Yes, it's definitely possible. They have side expansions that come with a full 68K, like the Gold Card. I might be tempted to get one at some point.
The drisk drive power cable is too thin what a cock up.
I thought that the Co-Processor as supposed to be a Floating Point chip
I think it's more like the PC's keyboard processor.
Why not build an GoEx in the Expansion Slot??
That's a great idea, especially if disk images were more useful with the QL. I suspect that as soon as I start looking into HD emulators, I won't have a need for disk emulators anymore 😃
640k, can the ql run msdos? 🤔
I doubt it. It's a totally different CPU architecture, but I suppose someone could make a compatible OS for it.
Digital Precision published a MS-DOS emulator for the QL called PC-Conqueror. Floppy disk only. It worked but by all accounts was S-L-O-W. I don't know if it was much better a faster QL.
@@thomasrotweiler Yup, it's definitely slow. I recently tried it out on an unaccelerated QL and played with some CGA MS-DOS games. I was able to run an old version of WordPerfect and it actually ran decently for that (i.e. you could actually edit a document and not find it unusably slow). It was pretty compatible though so a nice bit of programming. Mine ran on 512K of memory. I'm working on trying to create a small working disk image on a floppy that Conqueror can create because then I can move it to the Q68 and I'm guessing it would run very well there.
Quick n Dirty DOS, no it never existed in m68k and AmigaDOS is way more advanced
Where did the nice benchmark plot at 1:56 come from?
It's from the video where I did some BASIC benchmarking th-cam.com/video/H05hM_Guoqk/w-d-xo.html The actual chart can be found here docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bfWSR2Ngy1RPedS6j-M607eeAhsd40-nhAfswILzzS8/edit#gid=22692068
@@NoelsRetroLab I ran your program on my BBC Master. I got 15.70s with standard variables and 8.22s using resident integer variables.
@@NoelsRetroLab Since you now have Toolkit2, the other key software tools that you still need are: QLIBERATOR (Superbasic compiler) and the SUPERSPRITE Digital Precision library. With this combination (Toolkit2+SuperSprite+Qliberator) you could easily produce some nice game or utility that will multitasking happily along other apps. However, I am not sure if Supersprite works with too much memory installed. Also a C compiler for the QL would be nice to have.
@@NoelsRetroLab the dual screens you mentionned are meant to allow flipping 2 screens for double buffering, essential effect for games (and it was used by some professionally made videogames for the QL). The problem arose from the fact that originally the QL supported such double buffering by hardware but not with Superbasic running, because the system used memory positions just where the second screen is located. Thus the need for the Minerva to support dual screens through some memory relocation hack, so that the system no more prevents the use of the second screen. The Minerva manual explains how to use the MODE command to redirect graphic routines to whichever screen you want to draw onto.
BTW, I did not know Minerva but now read its manual: unbelievable amount of work! These guys were geniuses!
Back before I got a HDD for my Amiga I kinda hated floppy clicky noises. Now I go "awww" when I hear drive clicks away.
Totally!
Startup Squence should begin with C:NoClick
@@RasVoja For me, MCP did the NoClick, and it was further in s:startup-sequence, so I got few clicks before Workbench showed its face
It would be interesting to see the speed results normalized to a fixed clock speed, say 1 MHz. So, the Apple ][+ (6502 @ 1 MHz) would still have a score of 36, but the IBM PC clone (8088 @ 4.77 MHz), would get a score of (34 x (4.77/1) = 162.18, or 162 rounded to the nearest second). Likewise, if we take the ZX-Spectrum Next (Z80? @ 28 MHz) and slow it down to 1 MHz, it would get a score of (12 x * (28/1) = 336) seconds. 🙂
Fixed speed comparisons make more sense for similar architectures (some Intel processors for example), but as soon as you start comparing things like a 6502 and a Z80, it's extremely unfair to look at them with the same clock speed due to how they were designed.
@@NoelsRetroLab - The other problem is eliminating (or accounting for) unknown inefficiencies in the implementations of the BASIC interpreters used. Even if one codes the loop in assembler, you’ve got some processors that only have 8/8 (8-bit registers/8-bit data bus), but others may have 16/8, or even 16/16. Still, it would be interesting to make the calculations, then over/under-clock them so the all run at 1 MHz and see how close the timings match the predicted values. Of course, you’d probably have to modify the programs to talk to some (simple) hardware to time it, since the displays for most of the machines listed rely on the system clock to sync with the monitor (video display), with the clock speed off, the display would be all wonky (or the monitor might turn off, unable to match the sync pulses.) Still, you’ll have to find the highest speed at which all the CPUs will run without burning up, or giving unreliable results, due to the change in clock speed.
The switching regulator was obvious from the beginning.
Usually a profesional comercial item should work much better than hobbiest one.
Sure, but sometimes devices made specifically for a computer and tweak things for that hardware in particular, that's why I was expecting it to outperform the other regulators. Besides, the TRACO one sometimes introduces noise in the ZX Spectrum video, so it's not perfect in general, but here it was great.
I really dislike switch mode PSU’s and do my very best to get rid of them where I can, especially for audio use.
I can see that. Are there are better alternatives to a 7805 that don't introduce noise and don't release as much heat, or is it just one or the other?
@@NoelsRetroLab Any form of linear power supply will dissipate the higher voltage through heat, the wattage of which can be roughly calculated as P_th = (Vin-Vout)*A for the pass transistor/regulator.
For computers in general, most often a switchmode supply is the better option, and you can add extra filtering caps to the output to reduce ripple.
@@n33d4killz Is it true that switching regulators die faster than the (less efficient) linear regulators? Clearly these ones have lasted 30 years so far. You know what they say in computers: "if it works, don't fix it!".
@@chirchir8126 I don't think so, switchmode supplies in theory should last longer, since they don't generate nearly as much heat as linear regulators, and thus won't suffer from overheating or life-shortening from running hot. It's likely most switchmode supplies that fail are because they use cheap capacitors.
@@chirchir8126 It really comes down to initial manufacture quality. Linear regulators are much simpler designs, though the heat created will shorten their life. Meanwhile, a switching regulator should experience less heating, though there are more internal components that could potentially fail.
Switching regulators have come a long way since the 80s in terms of efficiency and reliability, so I wouldn't be surprised if a modern one would last longer than a similar vintage one.
"Steckplatz"? WTF? Is there a QL-Fanbase in Germany? I've ordered a new Keyboard-Foil a couple of years ago in UK - but never installed. 🙁
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Merci !
QL was too advanced to its time. Clive Sinclair and Gary Kildall were pioneers were visionaries that bet on Unix to get nice OS´s that were too advanced to their time.