The 21st Century Black Box Sinclair QL project

Space 1999 is toast. The moon is still in orbit around Earth. While there is ample overwhelming evidence of alien life on Mars, NASA and the scientific community remain in total denial. But that life is undoubtedly native to Mars so we keep the moon and have not met any extra solar aliens either.

In the 21st Century the QL aficionados thirst for new hardware to run their QL programs on. OK some claim they do not, but the QL Heavens analysts suspect that despite their daytime denials they still dream of it and of the golden age of QL hardware which was the 1990s. New QL hardware disappeared with space 1999 although the moon remained.

So what now. It is time for QL Heaven to bring back the black box QL. This is a long term project and will cost a good bit of dough. So do not expect immediate results but over the next few months and longer the project will be documented here.

First off the internal dimensions of the original QL case. These are obviously important for the fitting of new gubbins. The internal width of the case is 120 mm exactly. The gap between the casing screws holding the top to the bottom of the case is 140 mm. The depth of the lower case is 22mm and that of the upper case is 22mm. The feet that tilt the QL to a typing angle give a maximum of 20 mm. The maximum depth therefore varies from close to 60 mm at the back down to 40 mm at the front. Here is my photographic evidence.

By the way and for information there are a few 1990 hardware bits, no space aliens, on this QL motherboard. At the far left is a Goldcard interfaced to the QL. At the left side the microdrives located at the lower right of the motherboard is a superHermes card. The keyboard ribbons are disconnected in this image.