Have fitted a new GoTek (with the CONFIG.opd image set to auto mount at power on), a new black front bezel/button for floppy and re-soldered the broken joystick cable
Just got to learn more than the basics about using it now
The GoTek & floppy aren't as high as the original floppy drive and as the plate they mount on has no fixtures at the front (it just relies on the outer case holding down the drives/plate) I've put a temporary spacer in until I can find something better (play spot the QL space bar)
XorA wrote: Tue Mar 04, 2025 11:41 am
If I remember correctly you will need a tape/tape image to make the boot floppy unless you already have one or an image thereof!
I don't think the Opus needed some sort of boot floppy. All went from ROM, there. That was the +D Disk interface (Miles Gordon Technologies) that needed boot floppies, wasn't it?
For general use you don’t need a boot image as it recognises the disk format from the disk itself
But for FORMAT in particular (really just for the floppy I think as gotek images are already formatted so it knows the disk type) you need to have loaded the disk configuration into the 6116 RAM
As I have a gotek and a 720k+ floppy I’ve created a configuration that just sets both to 720k
Also on power on I have the gotek auto mount the config disk image and I just have to press R (run) & cr and it gets loaded if needed
I purchased 10 off DSDD 720K Floppies and I could only format a couple of them, and they were very temperamental
Then I realised I'd set the config to 80 tracks per side, but only 40 in total for the disk (though this actually was a bit of a red herring) so corrected that, still no joy
Then tried formatting the disks on the QL and they all formatted fine (one was slightly noisy but all formatted to 1440/1440)
I then realised that the spin speed was dodgy on the Opus, a couple of disks struggled to spin up at all at times and weird things were happening
Of course the real problem was the QL Spacebar "spacer"!
It was pressing down on the floppy drive causing issues, as soon as I moved it to only press down on the gotek I was able to format all 10 disks fine. What a prat
Am now waiting for a 26 pin card edge connector to arrive so I can make a printer cable to try and connect it to my retroprinter device
More bulky compared to the Disciple, but beats cassettes any day. I've just purchased a Cumana for my QL. Am still hopeful I'll get the mdvs working better, but I decided I needed both.
I haven't looked at doing serial to my laptop, but am hopeful that is a route to printing.
Am toying with getting a Spec+, but it's down the list for now.
Wicksy wrote: Wed Mar 26, 2025 12:29 pm
More bulky compared to the Disciple, but beats cassettes any day. I've just purchased a Cumana for my QL. Am still hopeful I'll get the mdvs working better, but I decided I needed both.
I haven't looked at doing serial to my laptop, but am hopeful that is a route to printing.
Am toying with getting a Spec+, but it's down the list for now.
The Opus Discovery (and the Saga keyboard) was what boosted my Spectrum to be a "real computer" BITD.
