qlwiki:cumana [Sinclair QL Wiki]

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 ====== Cumana ======
Cumana, a company better known at the time as a BBC micro disk drive supplier, were one of the early hardware companies for the Sinclair QL, releasing their [[qlwiki:Cumana Floppy Disk Interface]] in 198x.  They traded from Guildford in Surrey.


{{  qlwiki:cumana_upgrade_os9_ad.jpg?direct&120x170|Advertisement for Sinclair QL OS-9 Upgrade by Cumana}}


Interestingly, QLUB News from September/October 1985 talks about them expecting to release an OS-9/68000 environment for the machine (as well as the disk interface) - known as the 'Cumana Upgrade'


The OS-9 environment was to include:


  *A double density floppy disk controller for up to four drives
  *A Winchester hard disk interface
  *A RAM expansion unit (up to 512K)
  *A ROM expansion unit (up to 144K)
  *Both parallel and serial printer ports
  *A mouse interface
  *A battery-backed calendar
  *A graphics kernel


Cuamana did bring out a version of this hardware on a board to act as a co-processor for the BBC (although it is unclear if this ever went into production).


I wonder what happened to the QL version?


Cumana are still in business, concentrating on IT for schools - [[http://www.cumana.co.uk/|visit the Cumana website]]