Hacking a DIY Qubide

[Peter]

I did have an idea of combining the QL-SD / Minerva I2C board and QIMI onto a similar QIMI style PCB as an internal upgrade - but your QIMSI made that project largely redundant

Not necessarily. QIMSI requires BGA soldering, which disqualifies it for DIY. Also, FPGA prices went through the roof, while PLD prices seem to have normalized after the chip crisis. Last but not least, an extension slot hardware gives you more freedom where to place your devices in the address space.

[Pr0f]

I did have an idea of combining the QL-SD / Minerva I2C board and QIMI onto a similar QIMI style PCB as an internal upgrade - but your QIMSI made that project largely redundant

Not necessarily. QIMSI requires BGA soldering, which disqualifies it for DIY. Also, FPGA prices went through the roof, while PLD prices seem to have normalized after the chip crisis. Last but not least, an extension slot hardware gives you more freedom where to place your devices in the address space.

I was thinking it would be a board that bridges the right most ROM socket and the ZX8302 socket - and carrying a ROM, PS/2+quadrature mouse interface, QL-SD and the I2C functionality in the Minerva including the RTC chip and an I2C buffer chip for added protection - so it would keep the expansion slot clear - but the QL-SD part of it would use the expansion ROM area from 0C000-0FFFF. A suitable CPLD could do the QL-SD, I2C and address decoding for this, a small micro would handle the Quadrature mouse to PS/2 mouse interface.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

I have converted the Eagle Qubide data files into KiCad, here is a screen shot of the PCB:

Just got some tidying up on the schematic to do.

If you want to get a new PCB with the mods done, this is a way to do it.

If the ROM port is free, then QIMSI or QL-SD could be added to the ROM Port of the QL.

[Pr0f]

It's shame the Qubata ROM version doesn't allow changing of the device name - the REXT version does - so you could run it concurrently with win devices

A solution to that would be to load the Qubata driver from the QIMSI SD card - then you've got SD / IDE and 64K of ROM space to play around with (as you won't need the Qubata ROM any more)

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

It does allow rename of the device name, with the WIN_USE or QUB_USE command, which changes the 3 letter WIN or QUB device name, e.g. WIN_USE 'WDD' gives all hard drive access to WDD1 rather thsn WIN1

I had 2 QUBIDES running in a QL, one in the ROM Port, with the standard ROM and the other at standard QL slot, without the ROM, the REXT version of the Qubide ROM, but patched to change the name of the WIN commands. This surprising worked, well on a Super Gold Card.

The QIMSI can be used with the QL-SD, using the information Peter released at:viewtopic.php?t=4540

I flashed my QL-SD with the code and soldered the jumpers to the QL-SD ROM Port, now the QIMSI uses the QL-SD Card slot in MDV2 Slot.

[Peter]

The QIMSI can be used with the QL-SD, using the information Peter released at:viewtopic.php?t=4540

I flashed my QL-SD with the code and soldered the jumpers to the QL-SD ROM Port, now the QIMSI uses the QL-SD Card slot in MDV2 Slot.

Hi Derek, it is good to get some feedback on this. Glad that it works for you.
What I do not understand, is why people want to run IDE and SD in parallel on a QL (other than copying their data once).

On a Q60 I would understand it, because IDE is potentially faster than SD card over SPI.
But the QL, even with SGC, is so slow that SD card transfer is faster than the system bus.