Hi Dave, >I've been looking at the current "batch" (that's really too big a word for >it) of QL-evolved boards and don't really see anything that I can say >"Hey, that's a modern day super-QL! I want one!"
Q40/Q60 use the fastest possible CPUs, the fastest possible graphics, and (almost) the only extension bus that has a chance of QDOS software support *and* available cards. Of course there are some things that could be improved, if there was a market. But I don't see a real big gap in the hardware, which, if closed, would turn it into a "modern day super-QL". If you see it, let me know ;-) >There are some pics of some anonymous looking boards with a distinct >lack of interfaces, and ambiguous chips... :o) What do you mean by "ambiguous"? >I saw this. I've looked again and it seems I was misled by the pictures. I >saw a nice high-speed board with a [keyboard/video/insert guess here] Yep. MF II Keyboard-IF, sampled sound IF, and directly QL hardware- compatible graphic chipset are onboard. I didn't use PC stuff for the graphics and that proved to be a wise decision :-) >interface and two ISA slots. I had these nightmare visions of not having >any interfaces, or worse, having to use the ISA bus to connect the >interfaces (which is scary because none were illustrated or mentioned on >the site) - I say misled because obviously it must have these things - I >just didn't see them... Well, there are no extensions produced for the QL bus these days. At least none that aren't already implemented by the standard Q40/Q60 equipment. So in my opinion there was no use in implementing the QL bus. There is no (even slightly) realistic chance for having PCI drivers under QDOS/SMS, so ISA was the best. It makes no sense to have extensions without software support. The reason why we don't emphasize the slots are the current lack of QL software drivers for anything but IDE, FLP, SER, PAR. >I've been playing with StrongARMs. When Sinclair went away I followed the >Acorn route. This is the main reason I'm so out-of-date on the current >state of play... ;) The ARM CPU situation is magnitudes better than 68k. The Q60/80 is the fastest 68k machine I know, but if we had CPU's 20 times faster we would definitely use them ;) All the best Peter
