2 QLs for the price of 1

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Ruptor
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2 QLs for the price of 1

Post by Ruptor »

This is a good price at the moment but I wonder what it will end up at? Looks like someone was really in to the QL. Is the Thor rare?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284398967706


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tofro
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Re: 2 QLs for the price of 1

Post by tofro »

Ruptor wrote:This is a good price at the moment but I wonder what it will end up at? Looks like someone was really in to the QL. Is the Thor rare?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284398967706
Yes, the Thor is relatively rare. The unit that's on sale seems to be (to me, I'm not a Thor expert) a Thor 8 or (unlikely) a Thor 20. These were based on ex-Sinclair QL motherboards, extended with a CST-proprietary expander board (located under the QL board) that provides a 512k memory expansion, floppy, centronics printer, PC keyboard/mouse (which seem to be missing, at least I can't see them in the pictures) and SCSI(!) hard disk interface. The Thor 20 featured a 68020 CPU that was stacked as a daughterboard on top of the QL motherboard (so had to pipe its power through the narrow QL 8-bit-bus) - With the effect that only relatively few of the 12.5MHz actually ended up at the end user. The Thor 20 was "only" about 2 times faster than the QL.

The units ran a patched QDOS system (named ARGOS, and I'm not 100% sure whether that applied to the 8 and 20 as well)) that is not 100%, but somewhat compatible with QDOS, but are nice machines when working. Later in the story, CST produced an upgraded version, the Thor 16 that did away with the QL motherboards and provided a full 16-bit data bus and a 68000 CPU (these had the floppy drives stacked on top of each other instead of side-by-side.) - and was , thus, much faster than the earlier machines.

In case anyone wants to buy this lot: Be aware the Thor is very probably dead by now, suffering from battery leakage. The Thors have a battery-backed clock powered from the ubiquitous Varta batteries that are known to leak early and thoroughly.


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Chr$
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Re: 2 QLs for the price of 1

Post by Chr$ »

I have that on my watch list. Don't think he'll send to Germany and even if he does it'll cost a fortune with the customs on top. I'll see how it goes.


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Chr$
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Re: 2 QLs for the price of 1

Post by Chr$ »

The QL and CST THOR sold for £585! Not to me, I wasn't even 2nd place.

That's quite impressive. The QL/Trump card etc is probably worth £150-200ish, so the market dictates that an untested THOR like that is worth around £400. I'd have paid that if it was round the corner without the extra not-that-nice looking QL baggage and logistic nightmare.

Any one on here get it?


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Ask me about felt pads - I can cut them to size and they have proved excellent for mdv data recovery.
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Andrew
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Re: 2 QLs for the price of 1

Post by Andrew »

Chr$ wrote:The QL and CST THOR sold for £585! Not to me, I wasn't even 2nd place.

That's quite impressive. The QL/Trump card etc is probably worth £150-200ish, so the market dictates that an untested THOR like that is worth around £400. I'd have paid that if it was round the corner without the extra not-that-nice looking QL baggage and logistic nightmare.

Any one on here get it?
Earlier today someone posted a message on Fb, on Sinclair QL For Everyone (if I remember correctly), with the exact photos from ebay and said "this is my QL setup". I commented on the message and asked about the Thor.
Later this evening the post disappeared.

Later edit: Now the same user has posted another message on the group, but with different pictures: https://www.facebook.com/groups/3069939 ... 949102075/


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