Sinclair QL Floppy Disk Interfaces

[skagon]

High prices for rare/sought after items is just a fact of any hobby not just the QL. The time since those expensive add-ons were made and now has not seen any significant developments in new hardware for storage etc.

I still have a list of bits I'd love to get but they are like hen's teeth and when they do surface it's going to cost.

Unfortunately, you don't seem to understand the concept of "price driving".
If someone is set to buy every such "item" every time it surfaces, and is grabbing any at practically any price, that's not rarity or the market rules. It's price driving.
If there are sellers who sell for £50 or 60, and there's one person who will buy EVERYTHING and then re-sell (within hours) at double the price, then you know how those prices get high.

The "market forces" say "price: £60" and then someone else comes along and says "here's your £60... ok guys, this now costs £100".
Is that rarity doing that?

Also, the "market forces" dictate that, if you have something at price X and it doesn't sell, well, you lower your price.
If a baker asks for £20 per loaf of bread and nobody buys it... won't he lower the price until loaves start selling?
Know of anyone who keeps the same stuff at the same price for months on end? Until someone rich enough or desperate enough comes along, probably...

Please note that I am fully aware that I'm addressing a highly biased audience. I don't know your reasons, maybe you're the ones that "can" afford it...
If that's the case, sorry I disturbed your country club.

[tofro]

Hi,

don't know what you want to achieve, but lamenting about prices of long-gone equipment will definitely not get you one any cheaper. Verbal attacks towards probably the last active QL trader won't either.

The market is open. If you find a piece of hardware you like to have, just buy it for a price the seller is willing to accept. It's as simple as that and ranting won't help.

Tobias

[RWAP]

I think that this is an interesting discussion - however, I don't think that skagan will ever see eye to eye with any retro business making a profit, so that those profits can be re-invested in new projects.

I do not sell ANYTHING as 'tested when last put away' or guaranteed not to be dead on arrival - I tend to work on the basis of a 6 month money back warranty - for hardware it tends to be longer as it can easily prove to be a fault with the hardware which takes a while to exhibit itself and I have repaired Trump Cards, QLs and DivIDE Plus units ( or supplied replacement chips) years later to a customer for the cost of the postage...

In fact that has always been one of the benefits of the Quanta workshops that people bring along equipment which gets repaired by Quanta members for free on the day - often using parts which I have provided from my stock for free.

In the case of the two Trump Cards - actually the seller did not provide any warranty that they worked - saying one was working when last used and the other was untested as it had not been used.

Do I go around snatching up hardware from the market to create a monopoly - hardly - there are disk interfaces, QLs and other machines which come up on ebay, like anyone else I set a limit on what I am willing to pay for them and rarely even bid.

Yes, a lot of items are purchased by end users, but often they are bought by people who want to sell them on too... after all, where do you think traders get their second hand items from? Living in a world where you think that people will only buy things they want and not re-sell them the next day or in 2 weeks time if they think they can make a profit must be very nice...

So OK - why do I make a profit from selling stock? It is simple - there are two reasons (a) to live and (b) to fund even more projects.

What have I done over the years for the retro community:
Free activity
- Set up and administer forums for the ZX80 and Z88
- Help and assist users on forums and those who contact me
- Re-write the Quanta constitution to modernise it and ensure Quanta could continue running
- Write and publish public domain software
- Create and enter about 70% of the information on the QL Wiki to help increase awareness and hopefully grow the QL community
- Purchase multiple copies of second hand QL software, to get fully working versions and preserve them
- Liaise with copyright holders of software where I have been able to trace them and get the items released into the public domain, or where they are not willing to do this, re-release them commercially.
- Write numerous articles on the QL, its software and hardware

Commercial activity
- Invest tens of thousand pounds in getting keyboard membranes made for the QL, Spectrum, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Z88, ZX81, ZX80
- Support, fund and bring the ZX81 ZXpand project to market - setting a price which was fair to the market and ensured that the developer maintained enough interest in the project to continue manufacturing beyond the initial 20 he was going to make, and continue to develop the project to bring out the ZXpand-AY and new firmware updates
- Support, fund and bring the ZX Spectrum DivIDE Plus project to market
- Written and improved several QL titles
- Offered upgrades to commercial titles preserved under the preservation project, to allow users with the originals to continue working with their favourite software
- Create SellMyRetro.com with low simple fees - with the view of allowing myself and others to sell items at a lower price because they do not have to factor in the ebay fees.

I have probably missed out lots of things...

OK, so I could say enough is enough (as so many other QL traders have done) - give up and continue just to enjoy my QL and computers as a normal user and when it breaks hope someone else will step forward with a replacement part or the knowledge to repair it for me. I could happily sell of my business and stock in hand as a going concern and retire without worrying how I will pay the mortgage next month.

On the other hand, I could decide that profit was everything to me, and close down all of my free activities and just spend my time on commercial activities, and increase the fees on sellmyretro to squeeze as much as possible out of anyone wanting to sell items.

The forums and QL Wiki would need to be taken over by someone else or be taken off line, as I would not pay the hosting costs, or spend any time upgrading the software. I could save £100s in not looking for old commercial software just for the sake of preserving it.

Maybe the problem is that some people cannot believe that a 'full time trader' can invest time and money in things which have no or minimal commercial value - but then I am also a user, a collector and a lover of retro computers!

I do sometimes wonder what would happen if I took these things to heart and did just decide to stop my retro activities all together and maybe go and get a better paid job - I do know that quite a few projects would never have taken off and many users would be stuck trying to find a working membrane for their beloved computer!

[vanpeebles]

Please note that I am fully aware that I'm addressing a highly biased audience. I don't know your reasons, maybe you're the ones that "can" afford it...
If that's the case, sorry I disturbed your country club.

The whole country club and money thing is getting a bit silly. The only rollers we own are on our microdrives and we don't clean them with £50 pound notes either.

The buying and reselling thing happen in lots of areas now and it mainly takes place on ebay. I recently sold a load of Acorn games in a big bundle, and only had the 1 bid. They then reappeared costing each what I had sold the whole lot for. More fool the users who didn't bid rather than the ebay shop that will resell them for a big amount each. If they can make a go of it then good luck to them.

[1024MAK]

Well, I don't use http://www.amibay.com to trade. Every now and then I visit, as I follow links there from other places. Far too many rules (and despite what they say, it is not that hard to get round some of them).
Personally, my views on copyright are different to the current law. So that alone means I cannot agree with the sites rules. Plus some other rules (like "If you are contacted by a member of staff regarding, a problem with your account, or a transaction on Amibay, you must respond within 24 hours of receiving the PM." Not very practical when I work 12 hour night shifts).

I have traded with Rich (RWAP) in the past and will continue to do so.

I am in a position to buy more or less what I want, as I have paid off my mortgage. I do however shop around. Personally, I do think the prices of a lot of QL peripherals are rather high. After all, combined RAM/disk interfaces often cost a lot more than the QL computer

Buying from Rich does offer some extra value, but as I tinker with hardware anyway, half the fun for me is taking a risk, so I buy from various places.

A similar situation exists in the Acorn community, where there is a trader who repairs and reconditions Acorn computers.

At the end of the day, everyone decides how much they are prepared to pay (or are able to pay). And how much risk they are willing to take (e.g. ebay - spares/repairs/untested...).

At the same time, sellers decide the price they want for an item, or if they want to risk an auction starting at a low price.

Yes, where the supply of an item is very limited, price distortion occurs. This is most annoying. Indeed, for some items, for the price someone is willing to pay, it is possible to make one (e.g. ZX80 computer).

I disagree with Rich in one respect. It is possible to make new Gold Cards. The problem is, it would be a costly redesign, not a straightforward copy. And how many people would buy such an item? Not enough.

So I can see both points of view. But Rich has to buy items, then sell at a higher price to stay in business. You Skagon, are like most people, we want items at a low or reasonable price. There is no way to square this. And for the record, I do not believe a lot of bull about so called market forces. Market forces do not always work to the benefit of the producer or to the long term benefit of the customer.

If the QL community wants to survive, new active members are needed (see the problems with QUANTA and QL Today). Microdrives are not viable long term. Floppy disks are not viable long term. Emulation is not the answer either (explain to me how I can encourage a young person to use an emulator of an obscure {to them} old 1980's computer on an all singing, all dancing modern computer).

So an SD card system is vital. Also important is an inexpensive RAM card (with a socket for a EPROM/EEPROM/Flash chip so that people can have access to the extra commands in Toolkit).

Myself, I would also like an expansion card with all this included that slots into the expansion port.

The increasing cost of living that is affecting vast numbers of ordinary people is going to affect people around the world for many, many more years. So keeping the cost of new hardware low or at a reasonable price is important.

Mark

[vanpeebles]

If the QL community wants to survive, new active members are needed (see the problems with QUANTA and QL Today). Microdrives are not viable long term. Floppy disks are not viable long term. Emulation is not the answer either (explain to me how I can encourage a young person to use an emulator of an obscure {to them} old 1980's computer on an all singing, all dancing modern computer).

I agree with this 100% and it's safe to say that I think most of the QL community would too. It's too much of an unusual machine to get the feel of by emulation alone, too abstract. And we all know to a new user(I've been there and still class myself as a new(ish) QL user) your first massive hurdle is a decent storage solution. Fingers crossed we get one or two soon-ish and we can all kick on from there.

[RWAP]

If the QL community wants to survive, new active members are needed (see the problems with QUANTA and QL Today). Microdrives are not viable long term. Floppy disks are not viable long term. Emulation is not the answer either (explain to me how I can encourage a young person to use an emulator of an obscure {to them} old 1980's computer on an all singing, all dancing modern computer).

I agree with this 100% and it's safe to say that I think most of the QL community would too. It's too much of an unusual machine to get the feel of by emulation alone, too abstract. And we all know to a new user(I've been there and still class myself as a new(ish) QL user) your first massive hurdle is a decent storage solution. Fingers crossed we get one or two soon-ish and we can all kick on from there.

Here here - having just spent 20 minutes trying to get a disk drive to work that always did in the past, and then spending 2-3 hours to make 4 lots of microdrive cartridges to replace those which I supplied to a user a few weeks back, only to find that 2 of the new old stock microdrive cartridges failed and I had to replace both microdrive units... (still need to replace and re-test mdv2...) what can you do...

At least I now know that having used one of the Trump Cards I acquired last week, my own Trump Card is not working properly and needed a new oscillator - it wasn't my HD disk drive (which worked happily with my Super Gold Card, but as that makes so many changes and uses a different controller chip), then that was no guarantee it was my Trump Card.

That does mean that i can now revert at long last to using a Trump Card, thus releasing my long loved Super Gold Card for someone else to use - I just need a disk drive with memory for testing QLs and making software (and with the ability to make a fast microdrive image).

So did I buy the Trump Cards just to sell on ? No actually - I needed one to borrow to find out where my recent disk problems lay...

As for the Super Gold Cards - yes, as with anything, they can of course be made, well something similar, if it is a complete redesign from scratch - the logic code would need re-writing completely from scratch as the Altera chip used in the Gold Card and Super Gold Card is obsolete and although there are 100s on the second hand market - you need to know that they were made before a certain specific date if they are to work, and have not been programmed (as they cannot be re-programmed!)

But then, if I were to design a Super Gold Card, I would do away with a floppy disk interface completely and move to an SD card reader complete with Toolkit II, switchable Minerva ROM (or SMSQ/e) and 4MB or more memory similar to 1024MAK above.

[skagon]

I think Mark said it all. I agree 100% to most of his points, which are mine also.
I have no personal opinion about AmiBay. If I see something I like and get there first, I take it. However, the prices (hardware) there are very reasonable, most of the times.

I would obviously like to get things at a *reasonable* price. If I manage to get a "low" price, even better, but I've always paid fair prices -- considering that people who sell those things cheap, don't know anything about them and they'd be just as likely to throw them away. No loss there. And when I say "cheap" I mean, reasonable cheap. Like my offer for my Gold card, was £75, the seller took it, both happy. Reasonable for both.
And that's coming from someone who's living on an extremely limited budget at the moment.

The other thing I'd like to add is the reference to the Acorn trader. As much as I hate to admit, he's very honest in what he offers. He's created (or helped bring to market) a multitude of solutions and an example of what he sells would be a BBC B model, all serviced and recapped, with FDD module, CF interface, CF, ROMs, manuals for everything, and sometimes an FDD and disks, for £120-150.
So a new user can get a Beeb with all the bells and whistles for £150 tops.
VERY reasonable.
And the same goes for spare parts. Even brand new FDD modules go for £25 or so.

Compare that to the Spectrum community. There's a couple of guys active there. You can get a brand new DivIDE for £36 !!! A brand new FDD interface (PlusD) for £40! And original (old) PlusDs go for £50-60 on average. Spare parts are all well below £10.
Again, VERY reasonable.

On the other side, we have here a plain QL ROM set (which is not new, it's a pull from a dead QL) for £20 !! And don't tell me you can't make more of that! Hermes chips? £30! SuperHermes Lite for £60 if memory serves! Again... you can't make new? Get serious. They're ROMs (or m/cs with embedded ROM)!
Even Gold or SuperGold cards can be reverse-engineered and I am POSITIVE that if someone made new batches (not re-engineered or anything, just copies) and sold them for the cost of the parts plus labour plus a reasonable profit margin -- say... £10 per board, they'd sell out even before they were made.
But then again... you wouldn't make £50-100 pure profit per item. Or claim it's because they're "rare".

On another note: yes, Rich (what an apt name too) is doing a lot for free(?). Forums and software and all that. I don't think he's a "Mother Teresa" though. I'm sure it's not as selfless and pure. Forums and Quanta and fixing computers for the "community".
But then again, that's your business, isn't it? If you make a living out of QLs, isn't it in your best interest to keep some kind of community active? If it died out, who would you sell your stuff to?
You have to give some to get some... and then some...
And I'm sure you'd have bailed out long ago, if the whole enterprise wasn't profitable. I really don't think you're losing money, quite the contrary, actually.

As a conclusion, no I don't live in the clouds. I am very aware that people will buy and sell. But there's a limit. When someone will try to buy EVERYTHING in sight, be it Trump, Gold or SuperGold cards, and not give anyone else a chance, that's greed. It's trying to corner the "community" in the one thing they need most, plain and simple. Since these three are the current only existing solutions that combine storage, RAM and for the latter two, CPU upgrades, cornering the "community" there is a sure way of making a profit of 50-100%... and that's on second-hand items. No R&D, no manufacturing costs, no nothing. The only thing to do is... buy, buy, buy. Let not one go.

The main issue here is bringing in fresh blood in your "community". Personally, I have been put off by the ethics of this one. I have no problem buying from anywhere as long as I think the price is right. But I cannot believe that the way to attract members is to bleed them dry. Nor is it to limit their options to one, by eliminating any other source. That's called "monopoly".

One last word to the chap who thinks I'm trying to get one cheaper: did you see me get any offers?
If I find a piece of hardware I'd like to have, I'd also like to have a chance of getting it. If Ritchie Rich over here is getting everything at any cost, there's little chance of that, is there?
And I won't even mention the fact that other people who know nothing about the stuff but have one to sell, see his prices and then expect the same kind of money.
That's a whole new can of worms I won't touch.
I'm not trying to get one cheaper. I'm trying to get them cheaper for **everyone**.
And maybe expose this "cornering the market" and maybe help end this behaviour.

Oh, by the way, Rich... you never answered this: if your Gold Cards haven't sold at £165 for months now, how come and the price isn't coming down? Ever? Is there some secret "market force" there?

[skagon]

{blah blah blah}

So did I buy the Trump Cards just to sell on ? No actually - I needed one to borrow to find out where my recent disk problems lay...

So you thought you'd buy BOTH of them and two hours later make a £65 (at least) profit...
Hmmm... yes, that makes sense...

As for the Super Gold Cards - yes, as with anything, they can of course be made, well something similar, if it is a complete redesign from scratch - the logic code would need re-writing completely from scratch as the Altera chip used in the Gold Card and Super Gold Card is obsolete and although there are 100s on the second hand market - you need to know that they were made before a certain specific date if they are to work, and have not been programmed (as they cannot be re-programmed!)

You can always get a newer model and just port the logic code to the newer chip. On the VHDL level, it's a day's work tops and Altera will have guides (if not porting tools too) to tell you how.

But then, if I were to design a Super Gold Card, I would do away with a floppy disk interface completely and move to an SD card reader complete with Toolkit II, switchable Minerva ROM (or SMSQ/e) and 4MB or more memory similar to 1024MAK above.

And I'm sure it'd cost an arm and a leg to buy one too...

Couldn't help but notice how you so expertly avoided the "we need new users" issue so expertly... doubly-quoted but never addressed.
Nicely done!

[vanpeebles]

Even Gold or SuperGold cards can be reverse-engineered and I am POSITIVE that if someone made new batches (not re-engineered or anything, just copies) and sold them for the cost of the parts plus labour plus a reasonable profit margin -- say... £10 per board, they'd sell out even before they were made.
But then again... you wouldn't make £50-100 pure profit per item. Or claim it's because they're "rare".

That's far easier said than done and it's also been well documented on here in the hardware section(and elsewhere) as to the pros and cons of making new Gold cards. Also it's finding someone with the skills and time to make them.

Both the spectrum and acorn scene have plenty of rare items. The rarer disk interfaces still command high prices and the plus d prices have only just dropped in recent years. Toast rack speccies and +3s still command premiums over other speccies. Co-processors for the BBC are expensive and there are still very expensive shops selling 32 bit software & hardware. Not mention the prices for Elite lately.