The Sinclair QL Forum

Dave wrote:That rectangular one? The guy who designed it tried to sell me one. But it was big, and wouldn't fit in my QL case!

If we get you hooked up with Minerva and a modern storage system that uses SD cards, would you pull them out and use them again? You might also need a keyboard membrane.

I'm one of the three active hardware makers. If you have anything interesting that I could produce, I'm always listening.

Dave. I have a couple if Minervas, in fact I at one time assembled the PCB's for TF Services! Probably still have some bare boards down in the shed! I will dig some stuff out sometime. In the attic is a modified QL that I literally cut off the Right hand section (mdv area) completely with a bandsaw! It still works, just has a bit of video circuitry on a small veroboard. That was done to fit it into a particular case I seem to recall.

Certainly raised eyebrows at the time!

Hehe, I have about 50 Minerva MK IIs here, plus about 500 Minerva MK I.5s...

Dave wrote:Jan, wait.... You wrote Speedscreen?

He he, that was a hack of the original RAM version to get it into ROM

Jan.

wayne weedon wrote:

janbredenbeek wrote: The name was QSPIL (QBOX Serial Port Interface Layer, I mostly stole it from FOSSIL ).

Yes I remember that now you remind me. I wrote a version for one modem which I now cannot remember. I also used a version written for me by Jonathan Hudson which drove the Tandata QConnect i/f. His QTPI terminal emulator was first released on my BBS whilst he was away working in Oman. I used to get floppies in the post with the latest versions on quite a regular basis.

I remember having written a modified SER driver for driving the Tandata stack, which needed certain characters to be escaped. It's the QCON_Driver_v0_99.zip file in Dilwyn's software archive (Internet section). Also the original Astracom modem which used CTRL-P control codes needed a special driver.
I still have archived files of the Maximus BBS as it existed until 2003. I even have had it back online again about a year and a half ago for some weeks, but I mostly got Telnet logins from bots trying to hack it so it wasn't worth spending a dedicated PC running 24 hours a day on it. I did manage to make QLTerm connect to Telnet using QPC2 though - read this thread for the details!

regards, Jan.

janbredenbeek wrote: I remember having written a modified SER driver for driving the Tandata stack, which needed certain characters to be escaped. It's the QCON_Driver_v0_99.zip file in Dilwyn's software archive (Internet section). Also the original Astracom modem which used CTRL-P control codes needed a special driver.
I still have archived files of the Maximus BBS as it existed until 2003. I even have had it back online again about a year and a half ago for some weeks, but I mostly got Telnet logins from bots trying to hack it so it wasn't worth spending a dedicated PC running 24 hours a day on it. I did manage to make QLTerm connect to Telnet using QPC2 though - read this thread for the details!

I seem to recall having nothing but problems with the Astracom modem (Updated Hayes command version) I replaced it with a Amstrad V22bis modem on the Qconnects RS232 port I seem to recall. Then came the Courier HST modems.

I believe I did use your terminal emulator for a while then used Qem and QTPI. I also had a the Quanta version of the Terminal s/w TF sold. It was not really up to much really compared to the alternatives. I also used ZTerm quite a lot when I was doing CP/M work on the Sam Coupe which at least had a Zmodem protocol (On Z80!).

Those were the days of extremely expensive international calls. Although I'm nostalgic about it all, those bills were a killer! Was the same when I was using the Spectrum to access Viewdata BBS's like Laus Place (Laurence Reeves) and Micronet/Prestel over here, being online was such a costly hobby.

I would love to telnet into your BBS again if you put it online again.

Wayne..

wayne weedon wrote: I seem to recall having nothing but problems with the Astracom modem (Updated Hayes command version) I replaced it with a Amstrad V22bis modem on the Qconnects RS232 port I seem to recall. Then came the Courier HST modems.

Well in those days I bought a new modem almost every year to keep up with ever increasing line speeds. From 1200 bps in 1988 to 28800 in 1994 and finally 64Kbit ISDN in 1995...

Those were the days of extremely expensive international calls. Although I'm nostalgic about it all, those bills were a killer! Was the same when I was using the Spectrum to access Viewdata BBS's like Laus Place (Laurence Reeves) and Micronet/Prestel over here, being online was such a costly hobby.

Same here. I sometimes had phone bills amounting to a month's rent...

I would love to telnet into your BBS again if you put it online again.

I've spent quite some hours trying to get the old PC setup working under various emulated DOS environments. I got Maximus working under NetFoss but without FidoNet mailer (NetFoss requires a FOSSIL-aware BBS and is not a Hayes emulator but spawns the BBS on an incoming Telnet session). Under DOSBox I was able to run the Xenia mailer but Zmodem file transfers failed, probably because Telnet is not 8-bit transparent. Maybe NetSerial would work, but that's payware and not worth the money for just a small setup with only a few callers.
But maybe when Dave gets his WiFi dongle with Hayes modem emulator out I could run QBOX again on my Q68

Jan.

I find it amazing that I can get 400 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up, for $70/month.

I owned the Astracom. I bought it a couple of weeks before the Hayes ROM came out - he shipped me the ROM for free. It also came in a gray case, and when he found out I had a QLer, he sent me a black case and asked me to send the gray one back.

Dave wrote:I find it amazing that I can get 400 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up, for $70/month.

I've been on FTTH for 8 years now, can get 500/500 if I want to but currently have 80/80. I don't need such a fast line

Jan.

janbredenbeek wrote:

Dave wrote:I find it amazing that I can get 400 Mbps down, 20 Mbps up, for $70/month.

I've been on FTTH for 8 years now, can get 500/500 if I want to but currently have 80/80. I don't need such a fast line

Similar, but I need to stream uncompressed 4K content and 300Mbps will do it.

Though it's nice for Netflix too, where if I press play on a 4K show it's buffered and playing starting in UHD resolution in under 2 seconds.