All,
when listening to all this (admittedly interesting) talks about possible
revival of "quasi-native" QL hardware, the following questions should be
answered:
"What is native QL hardware"
"what did it make special 25 years ago"
"what of this would we still want/need today"
1. Had a Motorola 68k CPU
2. Microdrives
3. 512x256@4 colours display
4. poor serial ports
5. poor keyboard
6. expansion bus
7. ROM port
8. Very innovative (external) design, which I believe still looks
good today
9. QDOS/SMSQ
Well: (1) is probably no longer available, albeit you can still buy 68k
CPUs. FPGA would be fine, however. (2) is most probably not something
you would want to use today, (3) would need a huge improvement (While
some (software?) possibility to emulate MODE 4 and 8 would be nice), (4)
would need huge improvement, (5) would mean interface to PS/2 or USB,
(6) would be a nice-to-have, but what standard?, (7) is probably no
longer needed and (8) can be done by trying to fit into the original
case and (9) is a must.
So what's actually left is a 68k compatible CPU and QDOSMSQ.
That means to me there's actually no need to design a specific "QL
replacement hardware". You could take everything that meeds the two
requirements and has enough modernism on it to fulfill today's
expectation (Like SDHC, USB, probably Ethernet,...). Anything designed
today would (and should) definitely be far off what made out the
original QL.
Look here
http://www.experiment-s.de/en/boards/suska-iii-t/
This is something that already exists - fulfills (nearly) all the
requirements and just lacks a decent operating system. But is not cheap.
I would expect, however, that any other development would end up in the
same price range.
It's not the hardware that is missing!
Cheers,
Tobias
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