New (to me) Q40!

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Derek_Stewart
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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by Derek_Stewart »

RalfR wrote:Seems to be a quality problem of the PCB. I have had never such problems with PC mainboards when inserting RAM modules or ISA cards.
Derek_Stewart wrote:Hi,

The purpose of the rubber feet is an attempt, to support the PCB from be flexed from inerstion of a Card into the ISA sockets.

I have repaired Q40 boards were there has been damage to the internal circuit traces, around the ISA connectors.

There should also be support under the Rom and Ram Sockets, which may also introduce flexing of the PCB, when inserting ram modules.
Hi Ralf,

In my experience of repairing PCs, it is the quality of the components connected to the motherboard. There was many rubbish components fitted to motherboards, I replaced many failed boards due user downward pressure on the ISA/PCI/RAM sockets.

The Q40 board depicted above does show this problem, Photo 1 & 4 show the ISA connectors from different suppliers, which introduce a problem of the insertion of the ISA Card into the sockets. The sockets are supposed to be uniform, but this not the case.

My Qbranch Q40, the inner ISA socket end broke, which required a new socket. Of course I went back to the Q40 manufacturer, would say it was my fault, then wrote lies in QLToday. So replacing the complete ISA connectors made the Q40 functional.

So not the PCB design, the cheap and nasty components fitted.

The Q60 PCB design, is the same as the Q40 PCB design. No Q60 board ever failed like this.

Just to finalise all this bad feeling, the Q40, in theory can be converted to a Q60, with additional of extra components, I tried to convert my Q40 board to Q60.

Needless to say the upgrade did not work, mainly due the quality of the components used to build the Q40. I was best placed to judge this because of the experience of building the Q60.

I am surprised that this Q40 board actually works. At least they got some right....

I shall not mention the Q40 fiasco ever again.


Regards,

Derek
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RalfR
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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by RalfR »

Derek_Stewart wrote:So not the PCB design, the cheap and nasty components fitted.
Oh no, I do not mean the design (of course not). I have seen, that the ISA connectors were from different manufacturers. No problem, if they are in good quality, but as you have written, they are not.

Perhaps it would be worth a try to get them from the same source as Marcel's VGA. He seems to be very satisfied with them.


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Derek_Stewart
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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by Derek_Stewart »

RalfR wrote:Perhaps it would be worth a try to get them from the same source as Marcel's VGA. He seems to be very satisfied with them.
Hi, Ralf,

Thanks for the advice, but I did not make the Q40...


Regards,

Derek
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Peter
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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by Peter »

RalfR wrote:
Derek_Stewart wrote:So not the PCB design, the cheap and nasty components fitted.
Oh no, I do not mean the design (of course not). I have seen, that the ISA connectors were from different manufacturers. No problem, if they are in good quality, but as you have written, they are not.

Perhaps it would be worth a try to get them from the same source as Marcel's VGA. He seems to be very satisfied with them.
Does that have ISA sockets?


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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by Chr$ »

Thought I'd post this here instead of in a new thread.

I've just been experimenting getting the new SMSQE v3.37 onto my Q40 (EPROMS). Initially I made no changes with menuconfig just to try it out and eventually I was able to generate the HI and LO ROMs using my QXLII system, as it was closest to hand (had to LRESPR menu_rext and sigext30_rext first).

Popped them in and it was fine.

The default starts with just 4 colours and doesn't attempt to boot from the FLP, so I thought I'd change both of those settings - menuconfig'd the pre-conversion rom file, ran the make_bas etc again, put the resultant HI and LO data onto Eproms.... and it doesn't boot.

So I did it again but changed the initial display mode setting to '16 bit small' instead of '16 bit large'. Same thing - a quick flash of a few rows of nonsense on the screen then black nothing.

Wondered if the 'Try to boot from floppy' being set to yes was an issue, so did it again, generating HI and LO that were set to '16 bit small' and Floppy boot no. Still no boot.

Did lots of de-oxing, cleaned the EPROM pins. Tried the original default HI and LO with nothing changed with menuconfig and that worked again, so the EPROMs and the sockets are fine.

It seems when I make any change with menuconfig the resultant files burnt onto EPROM don't work.

Am I missing something, have I confused something along the way? Attached is a zip of 5 pairs of HI/LO roms, in case anything looks obviously wrong with them. The ones with Q40default_Flpno are the completely unchanged (with menuconfg) defaults that work.
Attachments
Q40v337versions.zip
(862.12 KiB) Downloaded 169 times


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mk79
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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by mk79 »

So you used the smsq_q40_boot_make_bas for this? I guess not many people try to upgrade the ROMs... Does the configured version work when you LRESPR it? Apart from that your best bet is probably to contact Wolfgang.

Cheers, Marcel


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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by Chr$ »

mk79 wrote:So you used the smsq_q40_boot_make_bas for this? I guess not many people try to upgrade the ROMs... Does the configured version work when you LRESPR it? Apart from that your best bet is probably to contact Wolfgang.

Cheers, Marcel
Hello MK, yes, used the make_bas program in all cases and even deleted the generated q40_gz, q40_rom, q40_rom_hi, q40_rom_lo files each time just to ensure it was 'clean'.

I will attempt to LRESPR the configured rom file....


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Derek_Stewart
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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by Derek_Stewart »

Hi,

The Q40 ROM image has to be configured before HI/LO ROM images are made.

As suggested, boot up the Q40 and LRESPR the new SMSQE rom image file. This allows the the new settings to tested before burning the roms.

Personally, I leave SMSQ/E 310 in rom and soft load the new version of SMSQ/E, QDOS Classic, Linux.


Regards,

Derek
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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by bixio60 »

Derek_Stewart wrote:Hi,

The Q40 ROM image has to be configured before HI/LO ROM images are made.

As suggested, boot up the Q40 and LRESPR the new SMSQE rom image file. This allows the the new settings to tested before burning the roms.

Personally, I leave SMSQ/E 310 in rom and soft load the new version of SMSQ/E, QDOS Classic, Linux.
Hi,
i have 337 in eprom and I can confirm that it works as soon as you configure smsqe before splitting in HI and LOW.

Follow the procedure in win1_smsq_q40_boot_txt and must work, or at least here is working fine.
Let me know if you need help

Fabrizio


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Chr$
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Re: New (to me) Q40!

Post by Chr$ »

Derek_Stewart wrote:Hi,

The Q40 ROM image has to be configured before HI/LO ROM images are made.

As suggested, boot up the Q40 and LRESPR the new SMSQE rom image file. This allows the the new settings to tested before burning the roms.

Personally, I leave SMSQ/E 310 in rom and soft load the new version of SMSQ/E, QDOS Classic, Linux.
I followed the instructions to the letter. The only thing I wasn't sure about is that it specifies you should make sure it saves the menuconfig.inf file. But where it saves that to etc has no bearing on the actual changed _rom file, does it? And what does the flashing disk icon indicate in the top right area of menuconfig? I don't think that is critical as it seems to save the changes and the .inf file fine.

Interestingly the same altered (with menuconfig) files result in a black screen when LRESPR'd too - and the original unchanged version works, just like with the versions on EPROM.

Derek, if you have a Q40/60 handy, could you by any chance generate working v3.37 HI/LO roms for me (with flp boot on and 16 bit colour at start up) and I'll burn that version and try it.

Oh Fabrizio... can you share here as a zip?


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