The Sinclair QL Forum

Beautiful.
Quite tired at the moment but I believe with your dongle the OPL2LPT will become easily usable thanks to either the I2S or I2C or the GPIOs ...

Sorry me for the silly question, but what is motor PWM ?
Any use to build a CNC ?
OK, found this for people interested, good tutorial : http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/blo ... ation.html

FrancoisLanciault wrote:Interesting device !

For the Q68, wouldn't communication through the I2C port be faster than using the serial port ?

It would be *much* faster.

I do have plans in that area - I just wanted the first board using the device to be available on most of the faster machines all in one go, and accessible for use with the lowest overhead, *NOW*.

Keep watching, there is more good stuff coming for the Q68 expansion port and I2C port. I just can't really test anything until I have my own Q68 in February!

I assembled ten dongles. I will make eight available and be keeping two for myself. People who post here can reserve one. I have 20 PCBs,

I understand my Q68 may be on the way sooner than I expected. I should be able to post some fun videos of one in use in the coming weeks.

For those interested in an SPI version, I'd like a few weeks to develop and test the revised firmware, and that version should be available shortly thereafter. Please keep in mind that if you want to have an internal wifi card, you can't put it inside a metal case.

Dave wrote:I wonder if the 115k limitation is simply one of SMSQ/E, or a limitation within the FPGA?

Neither. 115 kBaud is just the maximum that was sufficiently tested without hardware handshake.
At 230 kBaud many SER-USB converters for PC are no longer reliable, even PC to PC. So I didn't test beyond 115 kBaud.

Peter

Dave wrote:

FrancoisLanciault wrote:Interesting device !

For the Q68, wouldn't communication through the I2C port be faster than using the serial port ?

It would be *much* faster.

Keep in mind the RTC is also on the same I2C bus, so 400 kHz must not be exceeded, and I2C has the address bits overhead.

Also, I2C on the Q68 is just "bitbanged" by software, while the UART for SER works in the background and has a receive FIFO.

Zarchos wrote:Sorry me for the silly question, but what is motor PWM ?
Any use to build a CNC ?

Yes, if you add a power stage /motor driver.

Such a project would throw up the question where to run the CNC software. On the Q68, where we have our QL environment, or the Microcontroller, which is much faster.

Zarchos wrote:Any use to build a CNC ?
OK, found this for people interested, good tutorial : http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/blo ... ation.html

If you're looking to build a cheap but useful CNC, with X, Y and Z axis, what you need is simply one of these:

https://github.com/synthetos/TinyG/wiki

Then you'll want one of these:

http://openbuildspartstore.com/openbuil ... -system-1/

Then design your head, download some of the many fine open source CNC packages, and you're all set for under $500.

Thanks Dave.
Yes a friend of mine making moulds and I are interested by a cheap yet powerful 3 axis CNC.
Thanks for the links.

I am interested by 2 dongles.

Just a thought - this device might not only be useful for just QLs but for PCs as well. If you want to make a trip down memory lane and connect oldskool DOS FidoNet/BBS systems that can only handle AT-style modem commands to Internet you have only a few options - DosBox (which doesn't work well on file transfers) or NetSerial, which costs you at least $90. So this is a much cheaper solution. I only hope that CTS/RTS handshake is properly implemented and maybe also DCD (Carrier Detect). In any case, this saves me from having to write a serial-to-TCP/IP driver .
So please count me in...

Jan.

There is a separate PC version.

The Q68 has no CTS/RTS so it omits a serial level converter. Also, the peak power demand of the card is slightly more than the Q68 could be assured of supplying so it uses a USB power supply. Finally, the firmware for PC and QL is slightly different. The QL version understands the QL ASCII character set; the PC version can use ASCII or unicode. The PC version also has DTR, DCR, DCD, and RI but loses four GPIOs in the process.

If I can manufacture a PC version in bulk, I suspect it would be quite profitable. It would also really lower costs on the QL version.

The PC version is just a spin-off and afterthought of the QL version though.

I think the big thing people will ask for is the 10/100 ethernet RJ45. This card could support it transparently if the hardware was present. It just needs a MAC, phy and magnetics/socket.