First off I would like to discuss one of the best ways to improve upon your QL, short of adding more memory, disk drives or a hard drive. That method is to replace the ROM chips that are in your QL with the Tom Bent designed internal eprom board. When you do this you can then get an updated ROM for your computer that has had some (or maybe even all) of the bugs improved upon or eliminated. Currently the most often seen ROM in the U.S. is the JSU ROM. There have been several improvements made since this, however. Some of these are the MGUK, MGUS and the MINERVA ROMS. In Great Britain the JM ROM is still quite common, but has lost some ground to the MGUK and the MINERVA.
Here are a few notes taken on these ROMS. This is not a complete comparison of the good and bad points of these ROMS. If you are using the MGUS and trying to work with Digital Precisions IBM emulator program, the Solution, then you can not get back into QDOS from MSDOS. This effectively rules out being able to multi-task QDOS and MSDOS. With the MGUK and the MINERVA you are able to multi-task this emulator. I have been told the same thing applies to the CPM emulator programs, but do not have them to confirm this.
I have at various times used all of these versions of ROM, in fact I have a QL with each of them installed. All of them except the JSU and JM ROMs are on eprom. According to literature received the best reason to go with the eprom is that the ROM chips in your QL are very power thirsty. When replaced with the eprom, power consumption drops about 20% and temperature under the hood of your computer drops almost 50 degrees farenheit. Once this board has been installed in your computer you can always get the latest version of ROM installed by merely popping out the old chip and putting in a new eprom, or get it done for you if you are not an experienced hardware hacker.
With the Minerva chip, besides being nearly a complete rewrite of most of the original ROM, you get increased handling of math, text and graphics. Much of this is like having the program Lighning permanently installed. One other thing I like about the Minerva chip is that I can reset the computer by pushing CONTROL, ALT, SHIFT and TABULATE. I feel safe leaving a disk or MDV cartridge in the machine during this reset. I would not do this with the reset switch on the side. I can also have four choices on power-up, rather than two. I can get it to ignore added memory for those programs that only work with 128K, and I can put it into dumb terminal mode. Do these items at all tempt you to say “Where can I get these eprom boards or find out more about these various ROMs and how to get a replacement ROM?” If that is so, then contact :
MECHANICAL AFFINITY
513 EAST MAIN ST.
PERU, IN 46970
Send a SASE for more info.
They are also able to provide you with the famous Tom Bent improved ROM for your TS1000. This gives you better use of that old TS1000 and less heat and power consumption. I reckon they could even improve your ROM for the TS2068. If they made you an improved ROM for the QL, they can also put several other programs on that ROM, but only if you are a legal owner of that program. Examples of this would be ICE, SPEEDSCREEN, QFLASH or CPM to name some that I know about. If this sounds intriguing to you give Frank and Paul a letter or call.