QL ROM Versions

Updated: 15.02.13

A collection of of the QL ROM. Some are original Sinclair versions, others are privately produced versions. The Sinclair ROMs AH, JM, JS, MG and TB have been released for use in Europe, although rights to these are held by Paul Holmgren and Frank Davis for North America and permission should be sought from them before downloading them in or for use in North America. Click here to send an email to them. The Minerva ROMs are OK to use with emulators etc worldwide.

ROM versions prior to JS (e.g. AH, TB, JM) were early Sinclair ROMs. They are perfectly usable and many people still have AH or JM ROM QL systems. Version JS introduced several new features such as WHEN ERROR error trapping, WHEN variable value monitoring, and TRA translate features. JSU was a version of the QL ROM for North America. With the MG ROM came several international versions such as MGF for France, MGI for Italy and so on. Over the years, there have been some derivatives made, such as the 4MB version of the JS ROM, and John Alexander's MGUK ROM. The CST Thor computers used a derivative of QDOS called Argos as their operating systems. Later, the Minerva ROM was created by a small team at QView (Jonathan, Stuart and Laurence, hence the "JSL1" version of SuperBASIC). It's not really known for certain how the two-letter Sinclair ROM versions came to being, one theory had it that they were initials of Sinclair staff (e.g. JM may have been the initials of John Mathieson) or even taxi drivers who ferried QL bits and pieces around for Sinclair! A bit of a novelty is the Tyche ROM, a final and unreleased 64K ROM for QL hardware. Phoebus Dokos tells me that although he couldn't get this to work with the QemuLator QL emulator, he did manage to get it working with the QLay emulator. The QLay.rc file should look like this:

-r c:\roms\tyche-tra.rom
-c FC000@nfa.rom
-l win1@qlay.dir
-l win2@sub2\qlay.dir
-l mdv1@qlay.mdv
-f 11538.46

Replace the -f with the appropriate one for your machine, says Phoebus (sorry, not being a QLay user I don't have a clue what all this means!)

If you have access to back issues of QL World magazine or to the QL Documentation CD, Simon Goodwin wrote some very interesting articles about ROM bugs and the differences between ROM versions.

Disassemblies & Sources

JS ROM Disassembly A commented disassembly of Sinclair's JS ROM (Richard Zidlicky) (100K) [08/10/06]

JM ROM Disassembly A commented disassembly of the Sinclair JM ROM. Supplied as a separately zipped 2 disk set. (Caroline A Mathieson) [08/10/06]
Download disk 1 (122K)
Download disk 2 (101K)

Minerva 1.98 sources The sources for the Minerva ROM, version 1.98. Further details, including copyright notice and license terms, from author Laurence Reeves's website. The Minerva 1.98 binary ROM image may be downloaded from the above table. (Laurence Reeves) (431K) [08/10/06]

SMSQ/E is, of course, the operating system for QL and compatible computers. SMSQ/E is available from Jochen Merz Software, Quo Vadis Design and other authorised resellers. Interestingly, the source files for SMSQ/E are available from the website of SMSQ/E Registrar Wolfgang Lenerz, for those interested in the development of the operating system.

Minerva Utilities

Current extensions files and documents for the Minerva ROM, as supplied on the utilities disk which accompanies Minerva.
MiniConfig program (3K) - a SuperBasic program to configure Minerva Mkii (e.g. the real time clock)
i2c_io.zip (1K) - Current I2C I/O extensions.
Minerva 1.98 utilities disk (301K)
updates.zip (13K) - Current updates_doc file.
versions.zip (6K) - List of updates in various Minerva ROM versions.
setdate.zip (12K) - For Super Gold Card users to read Minerva Mkii date and set clock. BASIC and compiled versions.
british.zip (4K) - extensions to revert to British keyboard.
storei2c.zip (2K) - Phil Borman's utility to set Qubide hard disk parameters in Mkii I2C RAM.

EPROM Utilities

mageprom.zip Magnetic Eprom is a program to convert a 16K QL EPROM image into a version you can LRESPR to run from RAM (Jeremy Davis) (23K) [08/10/06]

softeprom.zip SoftEprom v1.10 relocates EPROMs from the QL EPROM slot to file. (Emmanuel Verbeeck) (8K) [08/10/06]

Qubide

Several ROM images for the Qubide IDE hard disk interface - different versions of the Qubide ROM had varying map layouts for the hard disks, etc (v1.50 includes a program on the utilities disk to update the drive map), so I've tried to put some of the main "vintages" here. Note that to upgrade a v1.mm Qubide to v2.nn, the GAL1 and GAL2 chips also need to be updated.

qub136rom.zip Qubide ROM image v1.36 (9K)
qub137rom.zip Qubide ROM image v1.37 (9K)
qub139rom.zip Qubide ROM image v1.39 (10K)
qub141rom.zip Qubide ROM image v1.41 (10K)
qub150rom.zip Qubide ROM image v1.50 (10K) and Utilities disk (50K)
qub156rom.zip Qubide ROM image v1.56 (10K) and Utilities Disk (54K)
qub201rom.zip Qubide ROM image v2.01 (11K) and Utilities Disk (189K)
qub202rom.zip Qubide ROM image v2.02 (11K)

store.zip. Store is a utility to to store a Qubide drive's parameters into SuperHermes permanent memory. This allows you to bypass the startup delays on Qubide hard disk systems, by avoiding the startup drive tests. Works wirth Qubide 1.41 or later only. (Phil Borman) (11K) [12/10/06]

qubide-gpl.zip. Derek Stewart has kindly sent me a copy of the Qubide 2 sources, which Phil Borman and Ron Dunnett have released for free distribution via GPL Licence. (337K)

Second Processor

ipc8049.zip A commented disassembly (as a Quill _DOC file) of the IPC8049 second processor chip software in the QL. (Laurence Reeves) [08/10/06]

Sinclair QL Printer ROM

Urs König has kindly supplied me with a ROM image of the firmware from the QL printer. The original QL printer was based on a Seikosha SP-1000 / SP-800QL circuit board (see pictures below, also from Urs).

Download QL Printer ROM Image (11K) [15/02/13]

The QL Printer manual is available to download from the Replacement Manuals page.

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