that really isn't up to standard though is the micro drives now i think this is one of the biggest reasons that the ql never caught on in the world of business as sinclair tried to save money by opting for this cheaper storage medium over the more expensive floppy disk and micro drives were previously available for the spectrum although the ql's format isn't compatible with spectrum formatted wafers as these little cartridges were called and these are really just loops of tape inside holding around NUMBER_TOKENk of storage they are a lot quicker than cassette tapes but the micro drives are notoriously unreliable so it will be interesting to see if any of these work almost NUMBER_TOKEN years after they were made although luckily i do have a more modern storage solution in the form of the v drive now this is a modern sd card based micro drive hardware emulator that i'll be connecting up to my ql very soon and it will mean that i can download all kinds of software onto it and the ql itself it's got to be said is a very cool looking machine it's got that classic rick dickinson sinclair design that same sleek black color that we saw on the spectrum and the zxNUMBER_TOKEN we've got a full keyboard on here as well which is actually very similar to the type used on the spectrum plus and we have the two micro drives on the front now generally the first micro drive would be used to load your application and the second would be for a blank wafer to store your data there's a reset switch on the right side of the machine and a micro drive expansion under a cover to add additional drives and there are loads of i o ports on the back of the ql we've got the two proprietary qlan network ports for networking other qls a proprietary power port rgb video out there's an included tv modulator in here as well dual rs-NUMBER_TOKEN serial ports that quite uniquely use phone jack connectors as do the two control ports for joysticks there as well so definitely non-standard and we have a rom expansion slot which actually early ql's had an included cartridge with part of the system rom on here as it wasn't finished on the machine in time and there's a large expansion connector behind a cover on the left of the machine for floppy drives and the like and internally the ql is quite unique it's got a motorola NUMBER_TOKEN cpu clocked at NUMBER_TOKEN megahertz which despite the name is actually slower than the motorola NUMBER_TOKENk as it's got an NUMBER_TOKEN-bit external data bus and a smaller address bus although it's faster than other contemporary cpus that were around in the mid-NUMBER_TOKENs like the zNUMBER_TOKEN or the NUMBER_TOKEN it is around half as fast as a NUMBER_TOKENk clocked at the same speed and the ql comes with NUMBER_TOKENk of ram on board in its stock configuration expandable to just under a megabyte at NUMBER_TOKENk and the machine sold initially at NUMBER_TOKEN pounds on launch in the uk soon reduced to just NUMBER_TOKEN. so that's the hardware next we'll get into the interesting stuff the applications the games the demos we'll get the machine up and running and have a look at all that next and just really quickly before we jump into that part of the video i
START_SPONSOR_TOKEN just really quickly before we jump into that part of the video i END_SPONSOR_TOKEN