My QL of yore

Until a few years ago I never owned a single piece of bought QL hardware except the QL itself. All the hardware I’ve used 30 years ago were built by hand by my late father, Herbert Kilgus, and mostly developed by his friend and work colleague, Jochen Hassler. All in all these were probably a few of the most customized (and stable!) QLs in existence:

My old and heavily customized QL
  • Internal 640kB RAM extension
  • Additional 128kB battery backed RAM disc (called “MOS” disc). This held all the files needed for quick booting. And when the files were not fragmented they could be CALLed directly
  • The MOS disc battery also backed the QL clock
  • A full 128kb set of ROMs filled with customized Minerva and additional essential utilities like TK2 and the pointer environment
  • A re-engineered Sandy SuperQBoard (Jochen jokingly named this “Herbert card” after my father)
  • An EPROM/GAL burner card developed by Jochen, essential to build and update our hardware
  • Many more minor changes to make the hardware more stable
  • The mice were all custom made from mice for other computers, too

Now, 30 years later, as a tribute to both my father and Jochen (who fortunately is still a good friend of mine, who is the reason I ever owned a QL and who is probably most to blame for me to become a computer professional), I have updated and released the Herbert and Eprommer II cards for posterity:

Herbert card
Eprommer II

3 thoughts on “My QL of yore

  1. Jochen Hassler

    Wow!
    Really very nice rebuilds of the “Herbert Card” and “Eprommer II”
    Congratulations for the excellent presentation of the rebuilds on your homepage!
    Jochen

    Reply
  2. philip heridna

    one ingenious aspect of the original ql, bearing in mind the limitations of then technology, is the concept of a keyboard computer, which to me makes a lot of sense as the tactile feel of a keyboard is superior to that of screen keyboards found on tablets. funny, few manufacturers have picket up on the idea.p.h.

    Reply
    1. Marcel Post author

      I guess one drawback is the ergonomics, your heel of hand have nowhere to rest while typing due to its height. The Raspberry Pi 400 is in the same vain, but much lower. But I still think the QL is gorgeous 🙂

      Reply

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