The Sinclair QL Forum

I am now wondering if it would be the SFRM72-TU100K I would need?

Seems to be the only model of 2 digit 99 disk 720kb Gotek made, but at £27 not much different in price to a Flopper.

I have only tried the original HxC Floppy Disk emulator with the QL and that works fine (and can be used for either DD or HD disk images - although of course, you can only use HD disk images with the Gold Card or Super Gold Card.

It is twice the price of the flopper, but at least it has been tested and works

http://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/detail ... es%29-2227

StarshipUK wrote:I am now wondering if it would be the SFRM72-TU100K I would need?

Seems to be the only model of 2 digit 99 disk 720kb Gotek made, but at £27 not much different in price to a Flopper.

Hi,

The Gotek drives I have are the 1.44Mb models with a 3 digit display.

I will see if it work on a Trump Card, since if HD drives are attached a Trump Card, they are seen as DD drives. So maybe the 1.44mb Gotek could work as a 720K drive.

I checked ebay and the Floppy Emulators (Gotek) are still the same price of £12.37-£12.50 shipped from China.

Hi Derek,
i have a 3 digit Gotek already tested. I work fine as long as you not try to format with a QL It is ignoring that). If you create an image on your PC, all partitions are MS-DOS compatible. If you than put the stick in you QL you can't format to the QL format.
Not tested, but a possible workaround is maybe to format logical (with Xover or similar).

Detlef

The bloke who makes the flopper has confirmed he does not know if it will work with a trump card, so I am not willing to waste money and play guinea pig.

I do have a HxC that I am currently using in a CPC6128, but could test using that.

It sounds like the 1.44MB 3 digit Goteks will not work, but someone already posted for some reason to only use the 2 digit Goteks and not to use a 3 digit Gotek.

QLObi wrote:You have than 100 disks to fill with data. Only buy the version which has this 2 Digits (99 drives), the versions with 999 floppies doesn't allow formating the disks with the help of the QL.
Look carefully for your needs: a 720k or the 1.44mb Version. Both working fine, but have differnent firmware.QLobi

So I am guessing it also comes down to the drives Firmware as to whether it will work with QL disk formatting. I can't find out much about this. Is this a special HxC\Amiga Flash?

I am tempted to get a SFRM72-TU100K being a 2 digit 720k drive it sounds like what I need, but am then wondering if I will need one with a certain firmware installed and whether that is something I can easily do myself. This model is also a lot more expensive than the common 3 digit drives available from Chinese sellers.

If I do get this to work, the next problem I face is creating QL Disks to use.

The homebrew games I have downloaded seem to be ZIP files with the contents of the disk files inside them, but no actual disk images and the HxC website does not mention support QL disks at all.

I think I read somewhere that you need to buy a QL Windows Emulator and use that to create the QL Disk files, then converting them to HFE files. I know how to create HFE files as I did this for the Amstrad, but I do not have a clue how to create the QL Disk Format files, copy the contents from ZIP files to these and I can not find any easy to follow instructions either. Is there any reason why the homebrew games are not already available in a QL disk format to download?

Usually the zip files are just program files etc. Not an actual disk format. The best way of doing it, is to unzip them on the QL as it preserves the file headers, which can be destroyed if you unzip them in windows.

StarshipUK wrote: I think I read somewhere that you need to buy a QL Windows Emulator and use that to create the QL Disk files, then converting them to HFE files. I know how to create HFE files as I did this for the Amstrad, but I do not have a clue how to create the QL Disk Format files, copy the contents from ZIP files to these and I can not find any easy to follow instructions either. Is there any reason why the homebrew games are not already available in a QL disk format to download?

You need to read the guide I wrote to using the HxC which is on Dilwyn's site - q-emulator is handy for the task, as you can unzip the downloaded files inside q-emulator (or connect them as a drive if you have the registered version) and then copy the files to a virtual disk image.

As for why the homebrew games are not already available in a QL disk format - it is because most of the software was written on systems with only microdrive cartridges and there was no microdirve image type.

If someone wants to do the work of converting the files to a disk image format (or maybe straight to HFE), I am sure Dilwyn would happily add them to the QL Homepage.

RWAP wrote:f someone wants to do the work of converting the files to a disk image format (or maybe straight to HFE), I am sure Dilwyn would happily add them to the QL Homepage.

All the code exists to do this nice and easilly, but I won't have time for a while, but take the mdvtool that MIST guy wrote and combine it with qltools for making .img files and your sorted, instant zip->.img file converter.

I will eventually do this, but be nice if someone else could

RWAP wrote:

StarshipUK wrote: I think I read somewhere that you need to buy a QL Windows Emulator and use that to create the QL Disk files, then converting them to HFE files. I know how to create HFE files as I did this for the Amstrad, but I do not have a clue how to create the QL Disk Format files, copy the contents from ZIP files to these and I can not find any easy to follow instructions either. Is there any reason why the homebrew games are not already available in a QL disk format to download?

You need to read the guide I wrote to using the HxC which is on Dilwyn's site - q-emulator is handy for the task, as you can unzip the downloaded files inside q-emulator (or connect them as a drive if you have the registered version) and then copy the files to a virtual disk image.

Thanks. I read the guide. It explained how to copy the files using the HxC software, but does not provide a step-by-step of what I need to do in qemulator to create the blank raw disk and copy the files from the ZIP files to the blank raw disks. I am guessing there are some specific commands involved and it is not as easy as just dragging and dropping. All it says is:
"what we did was to create a blank disk image and then use qemulator to copy existing files and programs across". It would be great to have a step by step for newbies that have not used the QL before of how to do that.