The Sinclair QL Forum

Dear All,

I have a plain 128k no TK2 good quality QL, I wish to expand it with a little amount of RAM, to get at least to a double i.e. 2x128k, as was the Sinclair option for QL developers back in 1984.

I am not much good at h/w designing as most of you here likely are. I looked at these components I wish to use to build my own expander ram.

DIN 2x32 1pc of female connector
DRAM 4164 a handfull
Some capacitors, resistors, not sure what values

Please see pictures. I would welcome any guidence or suggestions of yours, as for where to get recommended PCB layout, is there an article in one of the QL USER back issues covering this, what other components I may need etc.

In the QL Technical Guide, there is a paragraph covering external peripherals and expansions, but I realise I need more advice to get started.

Many thanks in advance
TCAT

I don't recommend using old type DRAM (dynamic RAM) chips for any new build. Old DRAM chips need some extra circuitry to generate the DRAM refresh signals. Given that static RAM (SRAM) chips of the sizes that are useful to us are now cheap, and are much easier to use, and need less "glue" logic, unless you want large amounts (>512k bytes) of RAM, use a SRAM chip.

Myself, I have been thinking of removing both Sinclair ROM chips, programming a EPROM with the OS & BASIC and putting this into one ROM socket. These leaves one ROM socket free to take a 128k SRAM chip. Of course, some extra chips will be needed to adjust the address decoding and for the DTACK signal.

This "project" has only got as far as the idea stage...

Mark

I built one using a 512K SRAM chip and a PAL...Now where I found this design? I'll look for it and post here

1024MAK wrote:I don't recommend using old type DRAM (dynamic RAM) chips for any new build. Old DRAM chips need some extra circuitry to generate the DRAM refresh signals. Given that static RAM (SRAM) chips of the sizes that are useful to us are now cheap, and are much easier to use, and need less "glue" logic, unless you want large amounts (>512k bytes) of RAM, use a SRAM chip.

Myself, I have been thinking of removing both Sinclair ROM chips, programming a EPROM with the OS & BASIC and putting this into one ROM socket. These leaves one ROM socket free to take a 128k SRAM chip. Of course, some extra chips will be needed to adjust the address decoding and for the DTACK signal.

This "project" has only got as far as the idea stage...

Mark

DRAM is not trivial to interface, and using old DRAM is really not recommended. Besides, 16 chips are needed for 128k, the board and sockets will cost more than buying a single 512k SRAM chip which is nearly trivial to interface to the bus.

The QL ROM socket has 28 pins and a total of 16 address lines, hence you can put at most 64k SRAM into it, and that's assuming you use wires to get to the rest of the address lines, read/write, data strobe, DSMCL etc...

The one thing people ask for most is a simple floppy interface and 512K RAM. There isn't room in the market to do both UltraQ and the basic interface, so I won't be doing it unfortunately, but there is a good chance I will do a basic 512K expansion by itself that can replace a lot of older memory expansions, be a bit quicker, and use a lot less power... I've been fence-sitting on that one for a long time.

Haven't decided if I should get off the fence or not.

Dave wrote:The one thing people ask for most is a simple floppy interface and 512K RAM. There isn't room in the market to do both UltraQ and the basic interface, so I won't be doing it unfortunately, but there is a good chance I will do a basic 512K expansion by itself that can replace a lot of older memory expansions, be a bit quicker, and use a lot less power... I've been fence-sitting on that one for a long time.

Haven't decided if I should get off the fence or not.

Do I detect a crack developing in your nether regions after all this fence sitting?

Hi,

I could not read the comment in yellow, as I get the QL Forum by RSS feed.

Only when I selected the message and Thunderbird with ThunderBrow Addon opened the web page, could I read the comment.

Derek

Derek_Stewart wrote:Hi,

I could not read the comment in yellow, as I get the QL Forum by RSS feed.

Only when I selected the message and Thunderbird with ThunderBrow Addon opened the web page, could I read the comment.

Derek

I will consider that for the future Derek

1024MAK wrote:I don't recommend using old type DRAM (dynamic RAM) chips for any new build. Old DRAM chips need some extra circuitry to generate the DRAM refresh signals. Given that static RAM (SRAM) chips of the sizes that are useful to us are now cheap, and are much easier to use, and need less "glue" logic,

Mark

Cannot the QL internal qlue and line addressing be somehow reused through expander connector, providing it similar RAM chips to those used inside QL, though fitted on a separate board?

I have seen this SIMPLEX RAM Expansion here
http://www.rwapadventures.com/ql_wiki/i ... on&lang=en

TCAT

There will be a properly made 896K SRAM-based memory expansion on the market in just a few weeks.