The Sinclair QL Forum

Someone else may know if this should work? (I'm not familiar with this board, or it's circuit diagram)

If you remove all the plug-in IC's ( it looks like the two SMD IC's have something to do with the IDE socket), and plug it in. Does the QL work normally, or do you still get the bars?

If you do this would suggest to me that there is a problem with the soldering shorting something on one of the signals on the big edge connector pins.

Looking at the photo's of the card, it looks like there may be some solder splashes between joints and adjacent tracks. Give the back of the card a good clean with resin remover, or Isopropyl alcohol, and a stiff brush (old tooth brush?). And have a good look with a magnifying glass.

Hi,

I had a closer look at the photographs again, I would say there are problems withe soldered joints.

I would give the under side of the PCB a good clean and get rid of all the flux, then examine each solder joint and reflow the solder joint as required.

You also look at the QL expansion port to see if any pins have bent on insertion of thr Qubide interface, this easy to do. The pins can be straightened with long nose pliers.

Does anyone know if there has to be a hard disk connected to the QUBIDE when booting a QL ?

axeman wrote:Does anyone know if there has to be a hard disk connected to the QUBIDE when booting a QL ?

Well, if you want the boot to happen within reasonable time, yes. QubIDE retries connecting to a disk for about a minute, if I recall right. But the boot should continue normally after that time.

Tobias

Martin_Head wrote:Someone else may know if this should work? (I'm not familiar with this board, or it's circuit diagram)

If you remove all the plug-in IC's ( it looks like the two SMD IC's have something to do with the IDE socket), and plug it in. Does the QL work normally, or do you still get the bars?

If you do this would suggest to me that there is a problem with the soldering shorting something on one of the signals on the big edge connector pins.

Looking at the photo's of the card, it looks like there may be some solder splashes between joints and adjacent tracks. Give the back of the card a good clean with resin remover, or Isopropyl alcohol, and a stiff brush (old tooth brush?). And have a good look with a magnifying glass.

The card must NOT be inserted without the two IDE GALs or the HC688 address decoder because the signals driving the two SMD chips which convert the QL's 8-bit data bus to IDE 16-bit datga bus will receive random control signals and will drive both the QL data bus and the IDE data bus randomly, i.e. when they are not supposed to, resulting in a non-functioning setup.

I had a look at the pictures and i can see about two dozen problematic solder joints, mostly cold solder joints where the IDE connector is and the address selection jumper for Qubide. In particular, the latter can result in all sorts of problems as it may map the Qubide interface in the middle of the OS ROM for instance, which will crash the QL for sure.
There is also a potential short to a surrounding ground somewhere round the middle of the board where one of the RAM or ROM pins (I think) is making a solder bridge to a ground fill, the blue solder mask has been slightly damaged along the edges of the ground fill exposing bare copper.
All of this must be fixed before it has a proper chance of working - and not eventually damaging something on the motherboard!
Also, the third GAL must be present if the RAM chip is in it's socket.
And, of course, if any GALs are present, they MUST be properly programmed or they either don't generate signals at all (and they should) or, if previously programmed, will do who knows what and may even be damaged when used on the board. The function of some pins on the GAL is programmable and if incorrectly programmed, it can end up with a pin being an output when it's supposed to be an input, so it will drive a signal together with something else connected there. If one drives opposite than the other, one or noth may end up damaged.

Note red arrows. There are a couple of different problems, when you can see the outline of the PCB pad around the solder, it's likely a bad/cold solder joint/ There are also a few pins on the SIL resistor pack where the surrounding ground fill has been exposed, and it's possible some pins are shorting to ground. Same thing for some of the IDE connector pins, difficult to say from the picture if it's flux residue or a possible short.

Took my time and have resoldered your recommendations. The QL now boots with the cardr inserted but no sign of the card working. Any other diagnostics you can recommend ?. Was thinking of installing a Minerva Rom as I've still got the stock JM roms installed

It will boot without a hard disk.

You can also run later firmware ROMS in this interface too - it works with 2.01 and with Qubata ROM (make sure you set the address to the correct one for this) These later ROMS do require you have the latest GAL versions in place, depends if you sourced you own parts or got a kit to build it as to what was supplied...

Incidentally - at present you have no jumpered address configured - is that intended?

According to the original Qubide notes - this would assign it address:

FC000h*** : : : : :

(this will likely only work with a Minerva ROM fitted)

Which was intended to be used with SGC card / Aurora to allow original 16K eprom slot to be free. This is the last 16K in the 1Mb standard memory map of a QL.

If you have no other cards installed and not using a ROM switcher or something in the ROM slot that's using that address - you could try :

0C000h* : : I I I Use with (Super) Gold Card, Trump Card

or

10000h** I I : I I
1C000h*** : : : I I Use with RomDisq

(These 2 require a Minvera ROM as the older JM/JS roms don't search here by default)

or

C0000h*** I I I I : First location in the expansion area after 512KB extension thats on your qubide card

axeman wrote: ↑Tue Apr 11, 2023 11:33 am Took my time and have resoldered your recommendations. The QL now boots with the cardr inserted but no sign of the card working. Any other diagnostics you can recommend ?. Was thinking of installing a Minerva Rom as I've still got the stock JM roms installed

Does the Qubide Rom logo get displayed on the screen, before the F1/F2 prompt?

Maybe post a photograph of the startup screen.