The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi Derek, Thanks. Any chance you could send me a copy of the TIFF for the meantime. The version I have from Spain is missing pages one, two and three, which I suspect provide copyright information. Furthermore, some of the later pages are difficult to read, which meant I was grappling with Screen ma...

Hi everyone, Following up on my previous post about the Computer One FORTH interpreter/ compiler, I'm on the hunt for the manual. I've found a fuzzy scan on a Spanish website [http://sinclairql.speccy.org/archivo/docs/docs.htm], which is reasonably legible (once you reorder the pages correctly!). Ho...

Hi Tofro, Thanks. I wondered about this. I bought the drives and PSU as a package from SellMyRetro, so the PSU is spec'ed for the dual drives. However, the PSU might be faulty. I'll contact the seller, if the loan drive continues to be problem-free.

Thanks again,
Georgeo.

Hi everyone, I have made some progress in that I've been unable to reproduce the problem with a different floppy-disk drive. I'll keep checking over the weekend, in case I've just been lucky so far. However, it suggests there may be a problem with my dual, floppy-disk unit or (floppy-disk drive) PSU...

Well, the PSU has passed a basic test. The two feeds are reporting 15.5V AC and 10.5V DC, with good stability, when checked with a multimeter. The DC is a little high, though I suspect this is within the tolerance for the device. Sadly, we were unable to test under load, but I think its reasonable t...

Thanks again, Mark. Should I infer that the regulated +5V supply is fed to external interfaces such as the Trump card and in turn is used to signal the two floppy-disk drives connected to the Shugart interface? It looks as if the (stepper?) motor that drives the read/write head is not being signalle...

Hi everyone, Thanks for the various advice. I've actually made some progress in that I have found a friend with a 3.5" drive that they connect to their own QL, which they lend me over the weekend. This will allow me to test the floppy drives and ribbon cable. They're a little nervous about loan...

In between trying to diagnose my floppy-disk drive problems. I've been exploring some QL programming environments and have discovered that I was a little hasty to think that I had rescued my copy of Computer One FORTH from Microdrive. While I can load the user interface, any attempt to perform a FOR...

Hi everyone, Well, it isn't the QL, as my loan unit sees the same issues. I've also noticed that one or other of the drives sometimes doesn't work from reset. That is, each time I reset the QL there is a reasonable chance (say, 25%) that one of other of the drives doesn't work. Furthermore, it usual...

In fact, I think I can get a loan of another QL unit, so it should be straightforward to determine whether or not the fault is within the QL.