QUBide upgrade to 3.0x

A seller : - "zaxon" based in Poland using www.sellmyretro.com has offered an upgraded chipset for the QUBIDE card. This is Alain Haoui's new QubATA 3.06 driver for QUBIDE cards, fitted with the newer v2 GAL chip. Upgrading the chipset avoids the need to LRESPR the new advanced driver for QUBide hard drives. Payment is via paypal. Once ordered the chipset came by post within 4 working days. It was as advertised except that the original ROM was the 2.02 QUBide ROM. A message via the sellmyretro site to zaxon got an immediate apology and the correct ROM was rapidly posted out.

The original ROMs were carefully levered out using a small flat bladed screwdriver and the new ROMs inserted carefully in to the correct sockets with the correct orientation. The pins on the new chips had to be carefully eased in to slightly more vertical positions for the chips to slide in to the sockets evenly and smoothly. All the chips were replaced so that the QUBide card now has 2.02 GAL chips and a ROM that was thought to be 3.06. I forgot to photograph the card with all chips finally inserted but anyway the test was to power up the Aurora QL.

The driver reports itself as 3.08Q not 3.06, what the difference is is unknown at this point. Also it is not clear what the unknown/faulty device that is being detected. However the CF card hard disk and the CDROM drives are correctly detected and function correctly. As the CF card device has slots for both a master and slave CF and there is no card inserted in to the slave slot this might be the cause of the report. Otherwise it has been a painless upgrade of the QUBide card.