My late Dad bought my my 1stCopmpuer which was the ZX81 & then a few yrs later - he got me the ZX Spectrum Plus & also he got himself the QL, Thanks for the memories 😉🚂🚂🚂
The Story I heard was that it hitting the discount bins after the Amstrad buy out was a boon to coders, many of who purchased it to learn 68k machine code before the Mac, Amiga and ST hit the markets in a proper and affordable form. Its was pointed to as one of the reasons for the translation of British Games creators being able to migrate to those platforms with such ease. So it has a place in history, OK, Only a stepping stone , but still a place.
QDOS is simple to work with and the preemptive multitasking makes assembler development work a breeze. Swap between editor, assembler and linker and then run the code, with everything all in memory and running at the same time. You only really got that in the late 80s at an affordable price when the Amiga A500 dropped in price.
I love stuff like this. Using old tech in a modern way brings me so much satisfaction it makes up for the little difficulties you have to overcome. I do insurance claims surveys and I sometimes build my report in the car on a psion series 5. Then transfer to a raspberry pi 400 when I get home to tidy it up. Takes longer but makes me happy.
I sent for a comparison sheet from Sinclair Research, highlighting how much better the QL was to the BBC Micro. They both cost £400 at the time. I ended up getting a C64 and 1541 instead - close shave! 😋👍
I'm not a huge fan of the C-64. But it is way more flexible, serviceable and reliable than any but the very latest runs of the QL. Even then the C-64 was just better.
@@lawrenceshadai4966 The QL was a better business computer (on paper at least) - 80-column text, 128K RAM, built-in mass storage devices and a bundled business productivity suite. Only it wasn't very reliable, which isn't good for business use.
@@Zeem4 I'm wondering where the lack of reliability is/was. I have no idea where that reputation comes from. The only issues I know about are splitting Microdrive rollers, the regulator going bad and static electricity from the RGB port frying the ZX8301 ULA. There are many dubious design decisions but reliability wasn't really one of them.
Great video... I hope you can get it working! Interestingly, they apparently picked the 68008 as it was slightly cheaper than the 68000 processor at the time, but by the time they got to market, the 68000 was actually the less expensive option owing to production quotas. 😂
The 68008 also has only 48 pins instead of 64 pins, so it takes up less PCB space. Also, I think early generation 68000's could only work with a 16-bit memory bus (8-bit peripherals were possible though).
I own one of the fairly uncommon NTSC versions of the Sinclair QL. I would guess they shipped in the United States for about 6 months or maybe a year, but I literally had never heard of them back in the 80's. Mine works OK, and one of my two Microdrives seems to function but I really have never done anything with it.
As a Speccy owner I absolutely drooled over the QL... But wasn't yet 20 so no disposable income to speak of. Bought all the mags that had reviews of it, like PC World, and read every article hungrily
I’m really looking forward to seeing the rest of this series and watching your repairs of the very distressed looking machine. The QL was the often dreamt of but never attained ‘dream machine’ of my youth.
I loved my QL. I really think if they had gone for a slightly higher price point, they could have fixed many of its flaws. Anyway, I'd love to see you restore the QL to the it's original working condition, then try using it for a little bit before upgrading. It's surprisingly capable even with 128KB, though with a few upgrades can do a lot more. I agree a storage upgrade is essential. If you can get hold of a vDrive, they are an amazing solution, especially when mapped with a vMap to let you specify which microdrive it masquerades as. Unfortunately, I don't think it's a simple as just buying one. There are several other SD card solutions, some of which are actually available. Another interesting solution is the Tetroid disk interface, which has 768K of memory, a floppy interface, and a CompactFlash card reader on one card. Might be interesting for swapping files between the QL and the Psion 5MX. I'm keen to see this progress, so you have my backing on Ko-fi as long as you're doing QL stuff.
I wrote a fruit machine game in Super Basic for my O'level in Computer Studies on a QL. Super Basic had scrollable panes that made it relatively easy to animate. Loved my QL right up until the point I upgraded to an Amiga...never looked back after that, although I still have fond memories of it.
My dad came home with one of these totally out of the blue one day. I had an Amstrad 6128 so wondered why he got it. I think he was given it and liked the idea of doing accounts and letters on it, hooked up to a daisywheel printer. We got it up and running, using Quill and the spreadsheet and it seemed not bad. The microdrives worked fine, but the fact there were no games at all for it meant my interest waned quickly! still have it in my retro aladdins cave in the loft somewhere.
My dad has one of these - I used it as a child, had no instructions and wrote a few programs to load/save/draw things, all gained from looking at other programs loaded (this was before the internet really kicked off, and I had no books/teaching aids).. never had any issues with it, and I thought the tape drivers were a lot cooler + better than tape cassettes.
I had a bargain bin one back in the 80’s I think it was £99, used the Quill software and Quen data daisy wheel to write technical manuals with it. I pulled it out the loft last year( after 20 years plus) and it fired up, even the micro drives worked. Replaced the membrane and It sold well on EBay.
Your aspirations for this machine are extremely ambitious! I'm gonna watch this one with much interest. I want to see you succeed but ..................................... hmmm.
I ve got a feeling you will be pleasantly surprised with how much you will be able to accomplish and perhaps with some productivity boost in certain areas.
We had the QL in our school computer lab in the 80's. It was about 30 of them and 1 Apple IIe we weren't allowed to touch. The QL was pretty nippy with the microdrive, especially if you were used to tape based systems as most of us kids were. The BASIC was fairly easy, the keyboard was nice to use. I am surprised we didn't have BBC B's though. I'm guessing some smooth-tongued salesman said "You're a modern comprehensive, you should have modern computers!" & flogged us QL's. Most kids owned a 48k Spectrum or C64.
i have seen a lot of vids about add ons and mods so will be interested in this series as i still crave a QL even after all this time , its the futuristic micro drives that got me originally and still does
I started with the ZX Spectrum in 1984, used it until 1992. In 1989 I bought a Spectrum +2 after my old one died. When I went to college in 1991, I bought a printer and used my +2 to do office work. I knew about the QL from its day, and I bought a very cheap functional one that served me through 1994, when I could get a PC. I got a Sandy Electronics SuperQBoard, that gives 640 Kb total ram to the system, parallel port and a floppy port which I used with a twin 3,5 DSDD units, and with that I could work. I also had a Z88 that I used to take notes at college, and then I passed the info to the QL via serial ports. You can use it perfectly for what you want, but you would like to read about the last upgrades. Have you found the Delete key? ;)
The coolest 'weird' (or very sensible) things I've read about but never seen a video on is 'Dithvide'. It was developed way after the QL died but shows that it could have done 256x256 in 32 colour or 512x256 in 10 colour by enabling the second screen buffer and flipping every frame, mixing colours in a flicker-free manner. Even with the dodgy, cycle-stealing ULA setup the QL should could and should have gone for the games market. It should have come with a better editor and a c/pascal compiler with integrated assembler, not SuperBasic.... Basic on cartridge, for the younger kids to muck about with.
I know of few business owners that in mid-late80s and even early 90s used microcomputers to keep theirs inventory and accounts. Most software was looking home made (programs made in BASIC/Pascal and the variety of computers used varied from Spectrum, C64, MSX up to early PC/XT/AT. My MSX that I got in mid 90s (HitBit computer+external floppy+monitor+printer) was used for that purpose and was sold because it was replaced with a 386 PC.
A friend of mine bought one for a tenner from a radio spares/surplus shop in the 90s and the computer was old then, mostly all we did was to try to get some games to work and expecting them to be a quantum leap over the Speccy, lol. The microdrives were pretty neat though, it was at least a learning experience, quite quirky in its own way. Always remember the look on the shop owner's face when we went in to enquire about it.
I did my university thesis on one of these - years after they stopped production. It was cheap, the word processor was pretty good and with a floppy interface it was pretty reliable. If you can find one, get one of the Miracle Systems upgrade cards - more memory, a complete CPU replacement, IDE interface, rom upgrades and it all fits inside the case in the expansion bay. Arguably the reason it never found a market was Sinclair's absolute insistence that it couldn't be a games machine - he never quite came to terms with the fact that the Spectrum's success was down to games and not education and business. Just when all the other machines were beginning to flex their muscles with better graphics and sound, the QL's barest of bare bones display and audio capabilities were almost puritanical.
My favorite Sinclair Machine!! Stopped using it, since the keyboard was rubbish. Software from Psion was great. Used two floppy drives with it. Could read PC disks as well.
What a great idea! Looking forward to how this series plays out. I had microdrives on my Spectrum and they seemed to work fairly well as I remember. Based on the information from your previous Psion video I'd say that trying to use it to run a business today could work, but more due to the Psion softwares brilliance rather than the machine itself.
I've had a QL for many years, one that I bought from eBay. The keyboard looks a bit rough and I don't think Ive ever really had a working display out of it either. So hopefully when you get yours working it may give me a push to have a look at mine again.
The CST Thor line of computers fixed some of the issues with the QL, but they came after Sinclair had already cancelled the project. In fact, the early models were built using leftover motherboards. If you want to find one, however, you're probably out of luck.
Good video, but slight correction around 2:10, Sinclair (or rather Science Of Cambridge) sold 50,000 ZX80s not 500,000. Also, I did (and still do) have a working Sinclair QL. I did a lot of my computer science degree essays and projects on it, including my dissertation write-up, which needed about 5 or 6 Quill documents as the 128kB didn't leave me with much space for editing. I also had Computer One Pascal (it's actually a p-code pascal compiler, so, pretty slow); a dot-matrix printer and a monochrome monitor. After Uni, I managed to upgrade the board to 640kB and add a dual 3.5" disk drive; Computer One Assembler. I added quite a few other pieces of software too over time and kept the computer until 1993 when I went Mac.
I had two QLs.....still do actually (buried in my loft somewhere). I loved the apps that came with it...especally Quill I will watch with interest....who knows maybe I will do something with one of mine
@@lawrenceshadai4966 I had no idea either. Then I was asked to make a backup of a disc (the guy was doing it one file at a time) and when I checked the disc had copied ok it was quill lol. Must be back in 1987- 1988
I had dreams about this computer I was so excited about it. How disappointed was I? 😢 Sir Clive’s distaste of making it a gaming powerhouse was its folly
4:44 - I'd say the keyboard was more useable. Having to do weird key combinations on the rubber key for essentials like delete, break and cursor keys was a pain in the arse. A reset switch was a massive bonus too.
I had 2 QLs (so many of us did it seems!) though the first one never worked properly. If I remember correctly those loose wires should have been connected to a block and would plug into that vertical black socket next to the keyboard cable. They're just the LED connectors though, so not vital. It looks like at least one of the keyboard cables has fractured so you might have some fun getting that working. It's a known issue with them. As for the ROMs, I would say find out which ROM version you'd like (that will work with this board) and if you can't find the binaries online I dare say one of us should be able to get our ROMs copied for you.
I’m going to be following this as I own a QL which works well, but the microdrives are (being generous) sub-optimal in terms of being storage devices that you can read back from once written to! That and Microdrive cartridges are becoming increasingly scarce!
Solution to those loose wires sticking out, is to stuff them in some lightly chewed toffee, then wrap it, good as new. Alternatively, connect them all to LEDs for a mugs eyeful, the Alan Sugar way.
Didn't had one and no clue about the Microdrive, but for a replacement idea, what about an RP2040 or ESP32 emulating one? Then the software still thinks its running from its original drive and nothing needs to be patched. Of course there would be need for some FUSE driver to mount the actual images on a PC, otherwise data transfer would be hard. For internet access, there is ESP8266 firmware out there that bridges between Serial and Wifi, essentially being a telnet client running on the ESP and the QL being a terminal here. There even is one that can run a SLIP connection if there are SLIP client drivers for the QL and software that could use such a network connection.
A friend bought a QL back then, and I always wanted one. Even if it was just for the BASIC.. I kind of still do. But in the Netherlands, they are quite rare and therefore expensive.. Still, let’s see how you fix one and get it to work..
I remember seeing one in a shop at the time, never saw one working, I always thought it was another Z80 machine. Red text on a white background is a good way to make your eyes bleed, btw.
I wish you luck, I had a friend who had one, and it was awful. ICL and BT did a specialised version of the QL call the ICL OPD, which was a much better implementation (and it had a telephone built in as well as a proper keyboard).
I'd be way too tempted to keep the MicroDrives and try to make an external MicroDrive to USB so they can be read on other platforms. It wouldn't work, but it'd be a funny project.
I would have thought in 2023 that the vDrive was the way to go. Basically looks electrically like a MicroDrive but is actually storing stuff on an SD card. Goes in the microdrive or QL case with a 3D printed slot thing for the SD card holder. Here is the ZX Spectrum version on a TH-cam video th-cam.com/video/_4lVD_PPzOw/w-d-xo.html
If you can get Dithvide working you should show that the QL could, from its launch, have done 256x256 with 32 colours and 512x256 with 10, and also a mixed mode interlaced 256x256 8 colour frame followed by a 512x256 4 colour frame 25 times a second, using stipple patterns to produce 256 colours. Also, Basic shouldn't have been included on rom, should have been a better editor and pascal or C compiler.+ embedded assembler. Would have been simpler, smaller and more useful.
The problem with all these old machines was locking owners into a proprietary operating system and software. Additional hardware was again limited to expensive add on devices produced for specific machines. The IBM PC opened up the market for everyone to source software and hardware from wherever they liked and brought costs down significantly. Being able to transfer information between different offices operating different but compatible machines allowed business to finally take computers seriously. So while in theory any of the old machines were capable of running a business, the experience would be rather limited to stock control, finances, and begging letters, all tediously subject to manual entry via a dodgy keyboard. At the time it seemed fun and bleeding edge, but the reality compared to modern desktops and tablets was that those old computers were very tedious, time consuming, and boring when trying to get any serious work done.
Doesn't matter IMO. The 8088 had an 8-bit data bus but nobody would call it an 8-bit processor. The 386sx had a 16-bit databus but is still being viewed as a 32-bit CPU. It's not so easy to define the "bitness" of a CPU as one might think.
@@EgonOlsen71 Indeed, the 68008 was Motorola's equivalent of the 8088, with the 68000 being in the same market as the 8086. Having a multiplexed 8bit bus meant that system designers could use the older 8 bit interface chips and designing a PCBs was cheaper too.
I had one. I loved it. I used it for university work. I got a floppy drive for mine, but I never found the microdrives too much of a problem to be fair. I still have a couple of microdrives somewhere. I must say the keyboard was shite, and I found it so at the time - I was just 18 I think. My problem was I didn’t have a good enough monitor to use it with. It was awful on a TV! There’s no denying it was clever, but there’s also the fact that Sinclair was basically a dishonest charlatan in my opinion. He sold stuff that didn’t work, and bodged it so it sort of did. His products were all shoddily built and late. His business practices were shady at best. I’d had a few of his products over the years and they were all terrible. But they were all ahead of their time in their own little way.
Always really like the look of the QL and Speccy Plus. Sadly never seen one in persona nd from talks I would probably not be impressed. Still, one day. If the stars aline.
Noels retro lab did a couple of videos on modern QL upgrades. not sure if these are what you had in mind: th-cam.com/video/JwEAQimyPTI/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/UOJ5EtRN3kM/w-d-xo.html
Sinclair really messed up with the QL, they should have done one of two things: 1. Either go all out to make it a solid, reliable business machine with high quality components, a proper keyboard, disk drive(s) etc. that would appeal to the business user but be much more expensive than what they produced (priced somewhere around £1000 mark to give decent quality but still undercut the competition) or 2. target the home market with a capable gaming machine that could use either tapes or cartridges (or disk drives although these were probably far too expensive for the average UK home consumer at that time). Instead they ended up with a machine that was capable on paper but lacked the quality and reliability business users needed, and was useless for gaming due to a lack of software support and Sinclair mismanagement. It ended up appealing to neither market.
It looks like the QUANTA user group might still be going, could be a useful source of information. A really good upgrade back in the day was the Gold Card or Super Gold Card, which had full-fat CPUs on them (a 68020 on the Super Gold Card IIRC). There was also an upgrade called the Hermes, which replaced the Intel coprocessor, which fixed the keyboard's weird debounce problems amongst other things. I've no idea what's available nowadays though.
20 years ago my QL ended up where it belonged: at the scrap yard. It's OK to be nostalgic, but the microdrives were a nuisance, if you could get them to work at all. The microdrives killed the machine, and the machine killed the Sinclair brand. Floppy drives weren't cheap back in the days, but trying to cut corners by equipping the QL with dodgy microdrives was unprofessional. Sinclair knew about the microdrive issues when they launched the QL. The QL wasn't a business machine, and it wasn't a gaming machine either. It was game over.
@@pascalharris1 Not really! It indeed would have the same "motor" and RAM plus all of the connections for peripherals. Improving graphics is not the same as saying the remains would be the chassis.
looking back seems like it was built to a too low price point ..... surely would have still been competitive with the bigger 68000 processor and tried and tested floppy drives but hindsight being 20:20 and all (those microdrives look like miniaturised 8 tracks lol)
Having owned one, briefly, this thing was the biggest piece of junk I think I’ve ever seen, almost everything about it is just wrong. Trust me that’s not something I like admitting having previously had a lot of Sinclair kit. It needed another 6 months to a year in the development cycle and a strong, focus rebuttal of building to a specific price. A little give in both might have seen a very different machine emerge that could’ve found a place in the market. Clive was too thinly spread on the ground at the time too which can’t have helped. Does it look good, dear god yes! Rick never failed. He was a design genius. At least his designs were his designs unlike certain big designers that just seem to copy others work and take all the fame.
get a Gold Card or perhaps a super Gold card from miracle systems and expand the memory to either 1 megabyte or 4 megabytes replace the roms with JS roms or perhaps Minerva roms definitely need tk 2 for directories best of luck
@@stephen9462 I never saw it running, but a friend bought a tiny Casio TV in about 1995. Cross-eyed viewing. He took it back to Argos for a refund, just a few days later.
Whose brilliant idea was it to take an 8 track audio tape and shrink it to use as storage for a computer? This machine was obsolete before it was released. British technology at its finest!
@@robbyxp1 ARM processors haven't been "British" technology in a long time... The only thing British about it anymore is that it's headquarters is in Cambridge.
My late Dad bought my my 1stCopmpuer which was the ZX81 & then a few yrs later - he got me the ZX Spectrum Plus & also he got himself the QL, Thanks for the memories 😉🚂🚂🚂
The Story I heard was that it hitting the discount bins after the Amstrad buy out was a boon to coders, many of who purchased it to learn 68k machine code before the Mac, Amiga and ST hit the markets in a proper and affordable form. Its was pointed to as one of the reasons for the translation of British Games creators being able to migrate to those platforms with such ease. So it has a place in history, OK, Only a stepping stone , but still a place.
QDOS is simple to work with and the preemptive multitasking makes assembler development work a breeze. Swap between editor, assembler and linker and then run the code, with everything all in memory and running at the same time. You only really got that in the late 80s at an affordable price when the Amiga A500 dropped in price.
Linus Torvalds learned much of his coding chops on a discounted QL I believe. That would be the machine's greatest legacy IMO.
@@Trenchbroom Linus didn’t like QDOS, which spurred him into writing the first Linux kernel once he got his first PC.
I had a Sinclair QL back in the day as a teenager. Very cool
I love stuff like this. Using old tech in a modern way brings me so much satisfaction it makes up for the little difficulties you have to overcome. I do insurance claims surveys and I sometimes build my report in the car on a psion series 5. Then transfer to a raspberry pi 400 when I get home to tidy it up. Takes longer but makes me happy.
I sent for a comparison sheet from Sinclair Research, highlighting how much better the QL was to the BBC Micro. They both cost £400 at the time. I ended up getting a C64 and 1541 instead - close shave! 😋👍
I'm not a huge fan of the C-64. But it is way more flexible, serviceable and reliable than any but the very latest runs of the QL. Even then the C-64 was just better.
@@lawrenceshadai4966 The QL was a better business computer (on paper at least) - 80-column text, 128K RAM, built-in mass storage devices and a bundled business productivity suite. Only it wasn't very reliable, which isn't good for business use.
@@Zeem4 I'm wondering where the lack of reliability is/was. I have no idea where that reputation comes from. The only issues I know about are splitting Microdrive rollers, the regulator going bad and static electricity from the RGB port frying the ZX8301 ULA.
There are many dubious design decisions but reliability wasn't really one of them.
@@Zeem4 Exactly my issue. An 80 column computer that did not work was inferior to my Atari 800 using AtariWriter that worked reliably.
@@Zeem4 That tape thingy though...
The Spectrum Plus upgrade gave you a much needed reset button. 😉 Really looking forward to seeing how you get on with this. Best of luck!
Great video... I hope you can get it working!
Interestingly, they apparently picked the 68008 as it was slightly cheaper than the 68000 processor at the time, but by the time they got to market, the 68000 was actually the less expensive option owing to production quotas. 😂
The 68008 also has only 48 pins instead of 64 pins, so it takes up less PCB space. Also, I think early generation 68000's could only work with a 16-bit memory bus (8-bit peripherals were possible though).
I own one of the fairly uncommon NTSC versions of the Sinclair QL. I would guess they shipped in the United States for about 6 months or maybe a year, but I literally had never heard of them back in the 80's. Mine works OK, and one of my two Microdrives seems to function but I really have never done anything with it.
As a Speccy owner I absolutely drooled over the QL... But wasn't yet 20 so no disposable income to speak of. Bought all the mags that had reviews of it, like PC World, and read every article hungrily
I’m really looking forward to seeing the rest of this series and watching your repairs of the very distressed looking machine. The QL was the often dreamt of but never attained ‘dream machine’ of my youth.
This is going to be an interesting journey. Looking forward to it.
I loved my QL. I really think if they had gone for a slightly higher price point, they could have fixed many of its flaws.
Anyway, I'd love to see you restore the QL to the it's original working condition, then try using it for a little bit before upgrading.
It's surprisingly capable even with 128KB, though with a few upgrades can do a lot more.
I agree a storage upgrade is essential.
If you can get hold of a vDrive, they are an amazing solution, especially when mapped with a vMap to let you specify which microdrive it masquerades as. Unfortunately, I don't think it's a simple as just buying one. There are several other SD card solutions, some of which are actually available.
Another interesting solution is the Tetroid disk interface, which has 768K of memory, a floppy interface, and a CompactFlash card reader on one card. Might be interesting for swapping files between the QL and the Psion 5MX.
I'm keen to see this progress, so you have my backing on Ko-fi as long as you're doing QL stuff.
Thanks James!
I wrote a fruit machine game in Super Basic for my O'level in Computer Studies on a QL. Super Basic had scrollable panes that made it relatively easy to animate. Loved my QL right up until the point I upgraded to an Amiga...never looked back after that, although I still have fond memories of it.
My dad came home with one of these totally out of the blue one day. I had an Amstrad 6128 so wondered why he got it. I think he was given it and liked the idea of doing accounts and letters on it, hooked up to a daisywheel printer. We got it up and running, using Quill and the spreadsheet and it seemed not bad. The microdrives worked fine, but the fact there were no games at all for it meant my interest waned quickly! still have it in my retro aladdins cave in the loft somewhere.
I can remember all the hype back in the day, almost got sucked in but ended up following the IBM clone route which in retrospect was the best policy.
My dad has one of these - I used it as a child, had no instructions and wrote a few programs to load/save/draw things, all gained from looking at other programs loaded (this was before the internet really kicked off, and I had no books/teaching aids).. never had any issues with it, and I thought the tape drivers were a lot cooler + better than tape cassettes.
IIRC a disproportionate number of the QLs in service years later have been the ones made (and debugged) by Samsung in Korea.
I had a bargain bin one back in the 80’s I think it was £99, used the Quill software and Quen data daisy wheel to write technical manuals with it. I pulled it out the loft last year( after 20 years plus) and it fired up, even the micro drives worked. Replaced the membrane and It sold well on EBay.
Your aspirations for this machine are extremely ambitious! I'm gonna watch this one with much interest. I want to see you succeed but ..................................... hmmm.
Got a QL recently - sorted the keyboard but yet to test the microdrives. Got a video of my repairs that show where that bundle of wires go!
I ve got a feeling you will be pleasantly surprised with how much you will be able to accomplish and perhaps with some productivity boost in certain areas.
We had the QL in our school computer lab in the 80's. It was about 30 of them and 1 Apple IIe we weren't allowed to touch. The QL was pretty nippy with the microdrive, especially if you were used to tape based systems as most of us kids were. The BASIC was fairly easy, the keyboard was nice to use. I am surprised we didn't have BBC B's though. I'm guessing some smooth-tongued salesman said "You're a modern comprehensive, you should have modern computers!" & flogged us QL's. Most kids owned a 48k Spectrum or C64.
i have seen a lot of vids about add ons and mods so will be interested in this series as i still crave a QL even after all this time , its the futuristic micro drives that got me originally and still does
I started with the ZX Spectrum in 1984, used it until 1992. In 1989 I bought a Spectrum +2 after my old one died. When I went to college in 1991, I bought a printer and used my +2 to do office work. I knew about the QL from its day, and I bought a very cheap functional one that served me through 1994, when I could get a PC.
I got a Sandy Electronics SuperQBoard, that gives 640 Kb total ram to the system, parallel port and a floppy port which I used with a twin 3,5 DSDD units, and with that I could work. I also had a Z88 that I used to take notes at college, and then I passed the info to the QL via serial ports.
You can use it perfectly for what you want, but you would like to read about the last upgrades.
Have you found the Delete key? ;)
This will be interesting!
I had one back in the day, and learned assembler on it.
Me and my friends did a lot of "weird" things with it.
The coolest 'weird' (or very sensible) things I've read about but never seen a video on is 'Dithvide'. It was developed way after the QL died but shows that it could have done 256x256 in 32 colour or 512x256 in 10 colour by enabling the second screen buffer and flipping every frame, mixing colours in a flicker-free manner. Even with the dodgy, cycle-stealing ULA setup the QL should could and should have gone for the games market. It should have come with a better editor and a c/pascal compiler with integrated assembler, not SuperBasic.... Basic on cartridge, for the younger kids to muck about with.
Looking forward to seeing how this works out.
I certainly did in the 1990s i wrote a custom piece of software in the database which kept track of my invoices and vat
I know of few business owners that in mid-late80s and even early 90s used microcomputers to keep theirs inventory and accounts. Most software was looking home made (programs made in BASIC/Pascal and the variety of computers used varied from Spectrum, C64, MSX up to early PC/XT/AT.
My MSX that I got in mid 90s (HitBit computer+external floppy+monitor+printer) was used for that purpose and was sold because it was replaced with a 386 PC.
A friend of mine bought one for a tenner from a radio spares/surplus shop in the 90s and the computer was old then, mostly all we did was to try to get some games to work and expecting them to be a quantum leap over the Speccy, lol.
The microdrives were pretty neat though, it was at least a learning experience, quite quirky in its own way. Always remember the look on the shop owner's face when we went in to enquire about it.
I've got 2 QL's around somewhere! Need to see if they still work!
I did my university thesis on one of these - years after they stopped production. It was cheap, the word processor was pretty good and with a floppy interface it was pretty reliable. If you can find one, get one of the Miracle Systems upgrade cards - more memory, a complete CPU replacement, IDE interface, rom upgrades and it all fits inside the case in the expansion bay. Arguably the reason it never found a market was Sinclair's absolute insistence that it couldn't be a games machine - he never quite came to terms with the fact that the Spectrum's success was down to games and not education and business. Just when all the other machines were beginning to flex their muscles with better graphics and sound, the QL's barest of bare bones display and audio capabilities were almost puritanical.
My favorite Sinclair Machine!! Stopped using it, since the keyboard was rubbish. Software from Psion was great. Used two floppy drives with it. Could read PC disks as well.
What a great idea! Looking forward to how this series plays out. I had microdrives on my Spectrum and they seemed to work fairly well as I remember.
Based on the information from your previous Psion video I'd say that trying to use it to run a business today could work, but more due to the Psion softwares brilliance rather than the machine itself.
Oh please, put the next video soon! I can't wait for it!
I've had a QL for many years, one that I bought from eBay. The keyboard looks a bit rough and I don't think Ive ever really had a working display out of it either. So hopefully when you get yours working it may give me a push to have a look at mine again.
The CST Thor line of computers fixed some of the issues with the QL, but they came after Sinclair had already cancelled the project. In fact, the early models were built using leftover motherboards. If you want to find one, however, you're probably out of luck.
Good video, but slight correction around 2:10, Sinclair (or rather Science Of Cambridge) sold 50,000 ZX80s not 500,000. Also, I did (and still do) have a working Sinclair QL. I did a lot of my computer science degree essays and projects on it, including my dissertation write-up, which needed about 5 or 6 Quill documents as the 128kB didn't leave me with much space for editing. I also had Computer One Pascal (it's actually a p-code pascal compiler, so, pretty slow); a dot-matrix printer and a monochrome monitor. After Uni, I managed to upgrade the board to 640kB and add a dual 3.5" disk drive; Computer One Assembler. I added quite a few other pieces of software too over time and kept the computer until 1993 when I went Mac.
Hear me out -- Microdrive... RAID.
I remember reading despite having very few colours you could "stipple" them together to create ANY colour! (Hmm...)
I had two QLs.....still do actually (buried in my loft somewhere). I loved the apps that came with it...especally Quill
I will watch with interest....who knows maybe I will do something with one of mine
I heard good stuff about Quill and the other programs it came with.
@@lawrenceshadai4966 I used quill for years. Even used it years later on a PC.... it was almost identical to the QL version
@@TDax I never even heard of a PC version ! Amazing !
@@lawrenceshadai4966 I had no idea either. Then I was asked to make a backup of a disc (the guy was doing it one file at a time) and when I checked the disc had copied ok it was quill lol. Must be back in 1987- 1988
I had dreams about this computer I was so excited about it. How disappointed was I? 😢 Sir Clive’s distaste of making it a gaming powerhouse was its folly
4:44 - I'd say the keyboard was more useable. Having to do weird key combinations on the rubber key for essentials like delete, break and cursor keys was a pain in the arse. A reset switch was a massive bonus too.
Looking forward to this.
I bought one back in the 1986 and still have it, but I only used it for a few weeks up until I got a used Amiga.
It's in near perfect physical condition but it doesn't work. I just dug it out and took pictures but I can't post them here 😥
I had 2 QLs (so many of us did it seems!) though the first one never worked properly.
If I remember correctly those loose wires should have been connected to a block and would plug into that vertical black socket next to the keyboard cable. They're just the LED connectors though, so not vital.
It looks like at least one of the keyboard cables has fractured so you might have some fun getting that working. It's a known issue with them.
As for the ROMs, I would say find out which ROM version you'd like (that will work with this board) and if you can't find the binaries online I dare say one of us should be able to get our ROMs copied for you.
I’m going to be following this as I own a QL which works well, but the microdrives are (being generous) sub-optimal in terms of being storage devices that you can read back from once written to! That and Microdrive cartridges are becoming increasingly scarce!
Solution to those loose wires sticking out, is to stuff them in some lightly chewed toffee, then wrap it, good as new. Alternatively, connect them all to LEDs for a mugs eyeful, the Alan Sugar way.
I remember seeing the machines in Cambridge's computer shops, but I never knew anyone who bought one.
Didn't had one and no clue about the Microdrive, but for a replacement idea, what about an RP2040 or ESP32 emulating one? Then the software still thinks its running from its original drive and nothing needs to be patched. Of course there would be need for some FUSE driver to mount the actual images on a PC, otherwise data transfer would be hard.
For internet access, there is ESP8266 firmware out there that bridges between Serial and Wifi, essentially being a telnet client running on the ESP and the QL being a terminal here. There even is one that can run a SLIP connection if there are SLIP client drivers for the QL and software that could use such a network connection.
A friend bought a QL back then, and I always wanted one. Even if it was just for the BASIC.. I kind of still do. But in the Netherlands, they are quite rare and therefore expensive.. Still, let’s see how you fix one and get it to work..
I remember seeing one in a shop at the time, never saw one working, I always thought it was another Z80 machine. Red text on a white background is a good way to make your eyes bleed, btw.
I wish you luck, I had a friend who had one, and it was awful.
ICL and BT did a specialised version of the QL call the ICL OPD, which was a much better implementation (and it had a telephone built in as well as a proper keyboard).
If I remember the OPD had microdrives re-engineered by Samsung They were much much more reliable.
I'd be way too tempted to keep the MicroDrives and try to make an external MicroDrive to USB so they can be read on other platforms. It wouldn't work, but it'd be a funny project.
I would have thought in 2023 that the vDrive was the way to go. Basically looks electrically like a MicroDrive but is actually storing stuff on an SD card. Goes in the microdrive or QL case with a 3D printed slot thing for the SD card holder. Here is the ZX Spectrum version on a TH-cam video th-cam.com/video/_4lVD_PPzOw/w-d-xo.html
If you can get Dithvide working you should show that the QL could, from its launch, have done 256x256 with 32 colours and 512x256 with 10, and also a mixed mode interlaced 256x256 8 colour frame followed by a 512x256 4 colour frame 25 times a second, using stipple patterns to produce 256 colours. Also, Basic shouldn't have been included on rom, should have been a better editor and pascal or C compiler.+ embedded assembler. Would have been simpler, smaller and more useful.
No experience myself but you might like to take a look at Noel's Retro Lab channel as he's done some of the same things, even down to the sponsor :D
The problem with all these old machines was locking owners into a proprietary operating system and software. Additional hardware was again limited to expensive add on devices produced for specific machines. The IBM PC opened up the market for everyone to source software and hardware from wherever they liked and brought costs down significantly. Being able to transfer information between different offices operating different but compatible machines allowed business to finally take computers seriously. So while in theory any of the old machines were capable of running a business, the experience would be rather limited to stock control, finances, and begging letters, all tediously subject to manual entry via a dodgy keyboard. At the time it seemed fun and bleeding edge, but the reality compared to modern desktops and tablets was that those old computers were very tedious, time consuming, and boring when trying to get any serious work done.
The 68000 is 16/32 bit, not full 32 bit - that wouldn't come until the 68020.
MC68000 CPU has 16-bit data bus therefore it is not a full 32-bit CPU like MC68020 and MC68030.
Doesn't matter IMO. The 8088 had an 8-bit data bus but nobody would call it an 8-bit processor. The 386sx had a 16-bit databus but is still being viewed as a 32-bit CPU.
It's not so easy to define the "bitness" of a CPU as one might think.
@@EgonOlsen71 Indeed, the 68008 was Motorola's equivalent of the 8088, with the 68000 being in the same market as the 8086.
Having a multiplexed 8bit bus meant that system designers could use the older 8 bit interface chips and designing a PCBs was cheaper too.
At 4:12 isn't that Z key upside down?
Yeah! you really look into small details!😃
I had one. I loved it. I used it for university work. I got a floppy drive for mine, but I never found the microdrives too much of a problem to be fair. I still have a couple of microdrives somewhere. I must say the keyboard was shite, and I found it so at the time - I was just 18 I think. My problem was I didn’t have a good enough monitor to use it with. It was awful on a TV! There’s no denying it was clever, but there’s also the fact that Sinclair was basically a dishonest charlatan in my opinion. He sold stuff that didn’t work, and bodged it so it sort of did. His products were all shoddily built and late. His business practices were shady at best. I’d had a few of his products over the years and they were all terrible. But they were all ahead of their time in their own little way.
Always really like the look of the QL and Speccy Plus. Sadly never seen one in persona nd from talks I would probably not be impressed. Still, one day. If the stars aline.
The keyboard looks used though. There's more dust in the space between the keys...
Should have used two full size 8 Track Cartridges with R/W capability.
Do you know where can i order a QL case with keyboard ? ....
or an Atari ST keyboard ? .... thanks
4:50 You're welcome
Are you Cristian? :) I'll add a note :)
USB Flash Pen Drives might be a more appropriate choice to replace the Microdrives with than SD Cards.
Actually, the 68000 has a 16bit databus so it'n not a fully 32bit CPU.
Noels retro lab did a couple of videos on modern QL upgrades. not sure if these are what you had in mind:
th-cam.com/video/JwEAQimyPTI/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/UOJ5EtRN3kM/w-d-xo.html
Sinclair really messed up with the QL, they should have done one of two things:
1. Either go all out to make it a solid, reliable business machine with high quality components, a proper keyboard, disk drive(s) etc. that would appeal to the business user but be much more expensive than what they produced (priced somewhere around £1000 mark to give decent quality but still undercut the competition) or
2. target the home market with a capable gaming machine that could use either tapes or cartridges (or disk drives although these were probably far too expensive for the average UK home consumer at that time).
Instead they ended up with a machine that was capable on paper but lacked the quality and reliability business users needed, and was useless for gaming due to a lack of software support and Sinclair mismanagement. It ended up appealing to neither market.
I totally agree, in fact games was the key to selling these home computers of the era.
It looks like the QUANTA user group might still be going, could be a useful source of information.
A really good upgrade back in the day was the Gold Card or Super Gold Card, which had full-fat CPUs on them (a 68020 on the Super Gold Card IIRC). There was also an upgrade called the Hermes, which replaced the Intel coprocessor, which fixed the keyboard's weird debounce problems amongst other things. I've no idea what's available nowadays though.
Do you know someone who is not themselves, acting strange, like another person. Reach out to them, ask them... "Dr Samuel Beckett, is that you?"
20 years ago my QL ended up where it belonged: at the scrap yard.
It's OK to be nostalgic, but the microdrives were a nuisance, if you could get them to work at all. The microdrives killed the machine, and the machine killed the Sinclair brand.
Floppy drives weren't cheap back in the days, but trying to cut corners by equipping the QL with dodgy microdrives was unprofessional. Sinclair knew about the microdrive issues when they launched the QL. The QL wasn't a business machine, and it wasn't a gaming machine either. It was game over.
Interesting but painful (using it today)
The QL could have been a great games machine with better graphics modes and hardware sprites.
Isn’t that a bit like saying “my car could be really environmentally friendly if it had batteries and a motor”?
@@pascalharris1 Not really! It indeed would have the same "motor" and RAM plus all of the connections for peripherals. Improving graphics is not the same as saying the remains would be the chassis.
looking back seems like it was built to a too low price point ..... surely would have still been competitive with the bigger 68000 processor and tried and tested floppy drives but hindsight being 20:20 and all (those microdrives look like miniaturised 8 tracks lol)
Having owned one, briefly, this thing was the biggest piece of junk I think I’ve ever seen, almost everything about it is just wrong. Trust me that’s not something I like admitting having previously had a lot of Sinclair kit. It needed another 6 months to a year in the development cycle and a strong, focus rebuttal of building to a specific price. A little give in both might have seen a very different machine emerge that could’ve found a place in the market. Clive was too thinly spread on the ground at the time too which can’t have helped. Does it look good, dear god yes! Rick never failed. He was a design genius. At least his designs were his designs unlike certain big designers that just seem to copy others work and take all the fame.
The 68008 is waaay better than the 8088.
get a Gold Card or perhaps a super Gold card from miracle systems and expand the memory to either 1 megabyte or 4 megabytes replace the roms with JS roms or perhaps Minerva roms definitely need tk 2 for directories best of luck
Could have been so good was stunted on the CPU and memory and the very dodgy microdrives and very iffy keyboard
I had that TV it was so awful
Imagine trying to use a word-processor with that TV as your monitor. Imagine trying to code using it. Ha.
@@Inaflap no inputs on it just a terrible aerial
@@stephen9462 I never saw it running, but a friend bought a tiny Casio TV in about 1995. Cross-eyed viewing. He took it back to Argos for a refund, just a few days later.
7:48 this chick probably has already grandchildren and - due to a life spent in the UK - no teeth. Time passes so quickly.
Whose brilliant idea was it to take an 8 track audio tape and shrink it to use as storage for a computer? This machine was obsolete before it was released. British technology at its finest!
Not British technology. Sinclair technology. Have a look inside your smartphone to look at British technology at its finest.
@@robbyxp1 ARM processors haven't been "British" technology in a long time... The only thing British about it anymore is that it's headquarters is in Cambridge.