Sinclair QL-SD, User Manual

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QL-SD User Manual 7
3.1.
Opening the QL Case
Before opening the case, make sure you remove all Microdrive cartridges, expansion and ROM
boards from your QL. Also make sure power is disconnected.
The QL case can be opened by removing the screws holding the upper and lower parts of the body
together. The screws are located on the underside of the QL, 4 towards the front side (on a
recessed ledge) and 4 towards the back side, equally spaced along the length of the QL (Note one
of the rear screws might hide underneath a sticker). On the right side of the QL there are two
additional screws directly underneath the microdrives in about the middle of the bottom case –
Leave those alone when opening the case, they are holding other QL parts on the inside.
Once you have removed the screws, flip the QL around (making sure that it doesn't fall apart yet)
and carefully lift the keyboard and top cover. There are still some cables for the power LED and the
keyboard connection that hold the upper and lower part together. Carefully unplug those from the
QL main board and remove the upper case. QLs that weren't made in Korea by Samsung (that is,
basically all U.K. and pre-Issue 6-Models) are said to have some tricky connectors for these cables
– be careful, because if you bend the wires they seem to be very hard to slide back in.
3.2.
ROM / EPROM Considerations
You should now decide whether you want to use QL-SD with its own dedicated ROM that comes
with Minerva 1.98 and the QL-SD driver. This has the advantage over any other solution that you
will not need to load the driver from disk or microdrive before you can actually start using QL-SD.
Minerva on the QL-SD's EPROM is probably the most advanced and bug-free versions of all QL
ROMs. TK2 is a must for every advanced QL user, so should be the first extension loaded from the
SDHC card, if not included from ROM.
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The disadvantages are small: There are still a small number of pieces of software around that are
said not to be compatible with Minerva, and you will need to load any non-English keyboard layout
from disk (or rather, QL-SD). It is thus thoroughly recommended to use the QL-SD EPROM unless
you have very good reason to do otherwise.
Unexpanded QLs will only work with the driver in ROM due to memory restrictions.
Should you go with the QL-SD EPROM, you need to remove both original QL ROMs from their
sockets, if you want to stay with your original ROMs, remove only one of them, once QL-SD is
installed, it is going to be re-fitted on top of QL-SD. If you want to go with QL-SDs EPROM, remove
both original ROMs (IC33, IC34). Actually, it does not matter which of the ROM sockets is used –
QL-SD works in both – we recommend the right one.
Please note that the QL-SD driver and hardware registers operate in the memory area
originally intended for the ROM slot ($C800 - $FFFF). With QL-SD installed, the QL ROM slot
may be no longer usable for other purposes.
3.3.
Installing the QL-SD Main PCB
As QL-SD goes where the QL ROMs are normally located, these need to be removed first. Either
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If you have a disk version of TK2 and do not use the supplied EPROM, load TKII like that:
base=RESPR(16384):LBYTES SDC1_TK2_EXT,base:CALL base
If that does not work (i.e, crashes your QL), it is because you might have a ROM binary which has
a header that needs to be skipped. Try this:
base=RESPR(16384):LBYTES SDC1_TK2_EXT,base:CALL base+PEEK_W(base+6)