Miracle Systems

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Miracle Systems Ltd
Company typeLimited company
IndustryComputing
Electronics
Founded1983
Defunct2004
ProductsExpanderam, Trump Card, Gold Card, Super Gold Card, QXL

Miracle Systems Ltd. were a manufacturer of

RAM expansion cards for the QL, which led to the Trump Card[2] combined RAM expansion and floppy disk interface.[3]
This was notable in that it mapped RAM into memory space reserved for external peripheral devices, thus allowing the QL's RAM to be expanded to 768 kB rather than the official limit of 512 kB.

The Trump Card was later superseded by the Gold Card processor upgrade card.

CPU with a 16 MHz 68000
and included 2 MB of RAM, a floppy disk interface (supporting DD, HD, and ED density 3.5 in drives) and a non-volatile real-time clock. Gold Card plugged into the QL expansion slot and required no internal modifications to the host QL.

The follow-up Super Gold Card had a 24 MHz 68020 CPU, 4MB of RAM, and added a Centronics parallel printer interface.[4]

In 1993, Miracle launched the QXL QL emulator card for

FPGA on an ISA card. The QXL ran the SMSQ Qdos-compatible operating system and used the host PC's disks, screen, keyboard, serial and parallel ports via an MS-DOS
"server". Two QLAN-compatible network ports were also provided on the QXL card.

The company was finally wound up in August 2004.

References

  1. ^ "QL 512K Expanderam by Miracle from Retrogames". www.retrogames.co.uk. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  2. ^ a b "OLD-COMPUTERS.COM : The Museum". www.old-computers.com. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  3. ^ MIRACLE SYSTEMS TRUMP CARD AND TOOLKIT II MANUAL (PDF). Miracle Systems. 1984. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 January 2021.
  4. ^ a b c "QL-Hardware". sinclairql.emuunlim.com. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  5. ^ "Miracle Systems Gold Card - Peripheral - Computing History". www.computinghistory.org.uk. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  6. ^ "Beyond Super Gold Card – Quantum Technology". 13 March 2019. Retrieved 16 January 2023.

See also