Nasta wrote:
>>This doesn't sound very good. My best wishes that your personal situation
>>may become better!
>
>Actually, I am sorry to say, it got signifficantly worse just a few days
>ago - WTC and Pentagon attack spillover...
:-((
>Yes. One of them is going to be finished very soon, too, the Qubide II
Congratulations.
>If you have read the readme.txt that come with the CDROM driver,
>it's mentioned in there.
I read it, but obviously not careful enough. I thought the CDROM driver
would just use the existing Qubide interface.
>Actually, I had an idea along those lines.
Me too. I waited to see if you are interested in smaller projects
or just "all or nothing" with your SGC successor.
>It has to do with the GF's IO
>part. Basically, the set of IO chips on the GF is really an 'integrated QL
>peripheral' of sorts, and just like the rest of the GF, it is also a
>relatively separate part of the PCB. It could be converted to a separate QL
>peripheral (within reason), or into a Q40/Q60 integrated IO card. In the
>later case, one would have to hope the extra features such as compatibility
>across all QL hardware platforms, fully featured sound, ethernet, PS2 mouse
>and keyboard, two IDE channels and the requirement for only one ISA slot
>would offset the higher price (which actually would not be that terribly
>high) compared to second hand old ISA boards.
As you probably know, the Q40/Q60 already supports all these features
hardware-wise, except that it uses a different mouse. (And except for ISA
sound cards, there already is software, too.)
Integration into one card is a nice thing, but new features for Q40/Q60
users would be missing, so I am not sure if that could attract enough users.
Could such a card offer something more? Something that can not be done by
just using existing ISA cards? That would make it interesting.
-
I had a different idea, how the Q40/Q60 might help you finish your SGC
successor project, and the Q40/Q60 users could also have a little benefit.
If you separate your board into two parts, and make them plug together via
the CPU's PGA socket, one of those parts could also plug into the Q40 or Q60.
This way you could rely on a tested environment and existing software, when
you start with the first part. And when you go for the second part later
on, you would already know that the first part works OK, and could use the
Q40 /Q60 as a reference.
If you manage to put something interesting for Q40/Q60 users on the first
part, you would already have a finished product that can be sold, long
before the 2nd part and all the operating software is finished.
Obviously there are also disadvantages, e.g. the logic split, and the extra
PCB. But maybe it is worth considering.
All the best
Peter
