The Sinclair QL Forum

Zarchos wrote:What about division ? Is it just as fabulous ?

No, division is not particularly fast. Also there is no barrel shifter, shift operations take as many cycles as the shift distance. (Never use shift operations to optimize multiplication.)

Zarchos wrote:Are there other marvels in the Q68, Peter ?

I'm not aware at the moment.

tofro wrote:Aurora can't live without either a GC or SGC as CPU/memory board and is basically a "combined Super-I/O and Graphics Card for GC or SGC".

Wording to-the-point Off-topic again, but do you remember if the Aurora still supported microdrives?

Except to shift 1 position only but ok it doesn't optimise anything, except it'll make the source easier to reuse on another 680x0 system

Or up to 4 shifts if you run from normal SDRAM anyway.

Peter wrote:

tofro wrote:Aurora can't live without either a GC or SGC as CPU/memory board and is basically a "combined Super-I/O and Graphics Card for GC or SGC".

Wording to-the-point Off-topic again, but do you remember if the Aurora still supported microdrives?

Hi,

The Aurora has no microdrive connections on the board. The Aurora was a replacement for the QL motherboard.

The only way to access microdrives was to use the QLAN to another QL.

Peter wrote:Wording to-the-point Off-topic again, but do you remember if the Aurora still supported microdrives?

According to the Aurora manual:

• The system might wait slightly longer at startup (this is mostly undetectable) trying
to find the microdrives, which have become history.

So although it still used the ZX8302 chip, it didn't have any connectors for the Microdrives.

Derek_Stewart wrote: I was going to make some more Aurora boards and build them into a QL case, with a Schon style keyboard.

Maybe you could work with Tetroid who can probably put the whole thing on one PCB?

Pr0f wrote: According to the Aurora manual:

• The system might wait slightly longer at startup (this is mostly undetectable) trying
to find the microdrives, which have become history.

So although it still used the ZX8302 chip, it didn't have any connectors for the Microdrives.

Hi,

I forgot about that feature.

Maybe a circuit little board with microdrive inteface circuitry could made attaching to the Aurora 8302 socket could be made.

Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's a good idea.

What did I just say?

Did I just become an adult?