Announcement - new QL Interface

[janbredenbeek]

Please no more sales of "Trump" cards. Unbelievable, the world is sick!

We should give a new name to this wonderful expansion card.

I'm afraid we're about to enter a new era of fear and uncertainty

I remember the 256K Trump cards were also called Ace Cards (though they were probably labeled as Trump Card 256K according to the manual).
Also, there was a Trey card which was to be used in conjunction with the Expanderam 512K, giving 768K extra memory.
The photo below is from my own collection - from the different RAM chips I can tell this card had originally 512K but was upgraded to 768K later, so the previous owner cut away part of the label mentioning the RAM size... (I used to own a 768K one too but sold it when I got the Gold Card... maybe we should just rename it to Silver Card? ).

later, Jan.

[tetroid]

Im sorry, I needed much more time to solder new interfaces.
Today they are done. I will dispatch tomorrow or the next day.

[vanpeebles]

Looking great

[Outsoft]

Im sorry, I needed much more time to solder new interfaces.
Today they are done. I will dispatch tomorrow or the next day.

Absolutely great!!!

Waiting for it

[tetroid]

I dispatched all Beta QL interfaces today.
Im sorry, bacause of problems with new floppy disk chips ( WD1772 is expensive now ), I inserted used chips ( with scratches ) but in working order.

[Outsoft]

I dispatched all Beta QL interfaces today.
Im sorry, bacause of problems with new floppy disk chips ( WD1772 is expensive now ), I inserted used chips ( with scratches ) but in working order.

Thanks!!!

[Derek_Stewart]

I dispatched all Beta QL interfaces today.
Im sorry, bacause of problems with new floppy disk chips ( WD1772 is expensive now ), I inserted used chips ( with scratches ) but in working order.

Hi,

Is it possible to replace the WD1772 by a FPGA chip, so that the disk drive controller could be updated by updating the FPGA

[RWAP]

I have now received one of these interfaces from Vitaliy (tetroid) and was impressed by the build quality.

I have fed back some suggestions (mainly the need to have a slightly longer card to allow for easier insertion / removal).

Following my suggestions, Vitaliy is going to try to see if he can get the v2 ROM (and GAL code) for the QubIDE to run, as well as the v2 Trump Card ROM. There is a v2 Trump Card ROM on Dilwyn's site, but it has a lower version of Toolkit II than the v1.37 Trump Card - so we will need to try and extract that Toolkit II and merge it with the v2 Trump Card ROM - has anyone done this (or do you know the offset of the Toolkit II ROM?)

Assuming the v2 Trump Card ROM works - what is the status of the level 2 device drivers for the Trump Card? Was it Albin Hessler that wrote these ?

Finally, we wanted to discuss some improvements...

a) If we can reverse engineer the Minerva MKII RTC circuit, we could include a battery backed clock. I would also suggest that we should add a small amount of battery backed RAM, so that the drive parameters could be stored (similar to using the storage space on SuperHermes) and allowing for faster start ups - ie. the QubIDE section would not need to read the drive parameters on every reset.

b) Would it be possible to add a button to offer a hot-swap of the compact flash card? The idea here is that you change the CF card, then press a button on the edge of the card to force QubIDE to re-read the drive parameters, without having to reset the QL. I don't know if this would work, but potentially it could be merged with (a) so that a list of previously used CF card details is stored in the battery backed RAM and then it would be much quicker to switch between cards.

c) Bearing in mind that the new interface uses memory which (I assume) is faster than the original Trump Card - we could do with a new memory test routine to further enhance the start up speed of the QL. I know the Gold Card and Super Gold Card were much quicker, but was that a different memory test routine, or solely the faster processor?

Comments and ideas / coding is (as always) appreciated

[tofro]

Assuming the v2 Trump Card ROM works - what is the status of the level 2 device drivers for the Trump Card? Was it Albin Hessler that wrote these ?

Rich,

the atr_ device and the Trump (scary, that name, as of lately, BTW...) Card level 2 drivers are apparently still (c) Jochen Hassler (and I think Jürgen Falkenberg).

Tobias

[RWAP]

Assuming the v2 Trump Card ROM works - what is the status of the level 2 device drivers for the Trump Card? Was it Albin Hessler that wrote these ?

Rich,

the atr_ device and the Trump (scary, that name, as of lately, BTW...) Card level 2 drivers are apparently still (c) Jochen Hassler (and I think Jürgen Falkenberg).

Tobias

Ah Jochen Hassler - any chance someone knows him and could ask for permission - even if it is on a paid basis (although bear in mind that this is NOT my project)