The Sinclair QL Forum

From memory 2.88 floppies are more unreliable than microdrives and usually wouldn't read on a different drive which is why they are rare and didn't take off. Why bother with floppies when there is the SD plug in floppy emulator that connects to a floppy port?

I plugged mine in after 35 years and it was exactly as I left it. What would someone do to check? Perhaps open the box look at it and say yes that is a QL then plug it in. :lol: Be brave and plug it in it is a lot less bother. The component quality is a lot better than the Cheap capacitors of today ...

KINGCHEF wrote:It might not all be over yet!

Sounds like you have found the problem. The QL connector is in mid air but I assumed extension cards would rest on the outside edge of the case or have some kind of support. Looks like you need a block of wood under the attached board, a bit of 10000 BC tech.

As the disc i/face is now not working with 2 of the QLs and only with Minerva I thought I would look at that first. This says the board is border line on the signals and might be loading the QL outputs or not giving enough on the QL inputs so putting it on a straight through backplane would make th...

You said The board works. The medic board works O.K. plugged directly into the expansion connector after removing the backplane. ! suppose that I could remake the track but as it is working I will not mess with it. Now what are you saying, nothing works? If the back plane bells out and has no shorts...

NormanDunbar wrote:You could do worse than http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/ptr/peig/pe.html. There's a downloadable version at http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/ptr/peig.zip and lots of "stuff" to read at http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/docs/ptr/index.html.

Thanks I will read.

NormanDunbar wrote:Anything running under the Pointer Environment uses the mouse

Errr! what is that? Can you point to something about the "Pointer Environment" I could read so I can get the point.

Is there any point in having a mouse on a QL? Is there any software that uses it? The questions are slightly off topic but maybe the topic wouldn't exist if the answer is no point in a mouse.

The track on the backplane connecting ASL on the expansion connector has been cut. The, now isolated, pin in the socket for the peripheral board has been hard wired to the GND on the 78S05 voltage regulator. The board works. So the peripheral board doesn't use the ASL but if other boards do they wo...

Is there anything special about a backplane? Is it not just all the tracks diverted and duplicated to one or more extra connectors? A back plane should pass all wires straight through effectively being inert to signal paths it is down to the attached boards to do the logic. I would make all wires g...