The Sinclair QL Forum

Dave wrote:Can't you just make an image of the edited ROM, then compare it against the original? A lot of stuff has to align up still, so it's only going to be simple substitutions of specific locations/vectors etc?

That would be my approach - but sadly I no longer own a Gold Card or Super Gold Card to make that comparison

I'm sure there are a LOT of people here who could help you.

Expect 48K images to be posted here from GC and SGC over the next couple of days by helpful QLers.

I have a ROM image of the GC 2.24 (taken from the ROM itself which is 64K with some gaps). I can post it if you like.

regards, Jan.

janbredenbeek wrote:I have a ROM image of the GC 2.24 (taken from the ROM itself which is 64K with some gaps). I can post it if you like.

regards, Jan.

Hi Jan,

Thanks - I think what I am looking for is an image of the first 48K of RAM in the GC / SGC after the 2nd reboot, i.e. after the ROM image has been copied and patched, and then I can just compare against the original ROM image to see what was changed / patched. I have a sneaky suspicion it's not heavily modified based on the fact that the ROM in the GC / SGC also hosts TK2 and the drivers for the devices that are present on the cards themselves.

It's part curiosity (look out for the dead felines), and part wondering how modified an original QL would still work with either of the Miracle cards....

From memory of looking at the GC code long ago, it has a different table of patches for each version of the QDOS ROM. While SMSQ/E replaces QDOS, the GC uses the original (but patched) ROM, so it needs to apply many patches. I didn't look into all of them, but some replaced timing-related code (the GC/SGC CPU runs much faster than the original 68008) like microdrive access, others added support for larger RAM and still others looked like fixes of QDOS bugs. Some (or all?) of the patches are jumps into the GC/SGC's own ROM.

In the Qemulator, does the Gold Card option effectively mimic this behaviour ?

Meaning a saved copy of the lower 48K would effectively tell me what got changed?

Perhaps I found a Gold card after all

Here is the original Minerva 1.97 ROM binary:

https://files.bredenbeek.net/s/4AmJAVUzH6vEHOZ

And here the Minerva 1.97 ROM modified by the Gold Card v2.24:

https://files.bredenbeek.net/s/mFaU12DRiAqfx5U

I'm not sure if it's OK to post a link to the Gold Card ROM - AFAIK it's still copyrighted software. But at least you can see the ROM patches now.

Jan.

Many thanks Jan - that should help quite a lot with working out what routines the Gold Card patches in the ROM

I have a Gold card ROM image somewhere, I'm sure of it.

Pr0f wrote:In the Qemulator, does the Gold Card option effectively mimic this behaviour ?

It doesn't. Q-emulator only emulates a little bit of the Gold Card hardware, just enough to enable the GC version of SMSQ/e to run.

janbredenbeek wrote:I'm not sure if it's OK to post a link to the Gold Card ROM - AFAIK it's still copyrighted software.

How about the recent GoldCard clones then?