A private QL Snapshot of 1986-88

[Chr$]

Me again. About 20 of the cartridges wouldn't DIR at all in the QL, so I put them to one side and tried them with a Spectrum today. Sure enough, most are Spectrum carts and most have at least some intact content. Most historically significant so far are probably 2 letters (written using Tasword 3) I have just discovered from the original owner to Amstrad, just after they'd taken over Sinclair, setting out his grievances about the upgrade of his Spectrum to a Spectrum+, which came back dodgy, twice, and then a letter to Alan Sugar personally to express his dismay about the problems with his Spectrum+! Quality.

As for the recovery of the QL carts, I probably have a pretty good setup, with a WIN1_, FLP and vDrive available. Recovering data from the Spectrum carts is more challenging though, because they seem to be a little more flaky in terms of reliability and I also have no way of moving the data to another medium (at least, not an automated way that won't involve days of work).

I know this is a QL domain, but if anyone has any tricks or suggestions, I'm all ears. I suppose a vDrive ZX is probably the easiest option to go for to pop the stuff onto SD card and then onto modern computers to access with emulators etc.

And that's without further getting into the QL carts, which have some odd or unidentifiable formats.

Oh, I did ask the man that sold them to me if he knew the original owners and he replied: "Unfortunately I have no way of contacting the original owners. But I believe the original owners would’ve been fully aware of what they left in the property before leaving. So you’re free to do as you will with regards to wiping the information. "

[stephen_usher]

Have a look at this posting for ZX Microdrive data back-up... viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2996&start=10#p29395

[Chr$]

Have a look at this posting for ZX Microdrive data back-up... viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2996&start=10#p29395

Yes, I'd seen that. I tried that before, but it's a pain when there are bad sectors! I think I may contact Charles and get a vDrive ZX.

I've just discovered that the original owner seems to have created some kind of software called 'Concord', I think for the Spectrum. There is a thankyou letter to someone who seems to have purchased it, so it looks like some kind of software venture. I also found a file called 'Concord' but it wouldn't load!

[stephen_usher]

To be honest, usual a vDriveZX won't make things much faster.

[Chr$]

No (I know from vDrive QL experience), but at least it's all in one place and I can create an image and then copy files to it with the result as an MDR image without too many possible hiccups.

[stephen_usher]

I understand. I had usable MDR files I was able to read (and use) in the vDriveZX once it turned up.

[Chr$]

I have now created 48 mdv images of 48 QL cartridges (there were others, but they were mostly non personal stuff like backups of Psion etc, plus I have about 30 odd Spectrum carts).

There are a lot of lecturing notes and I have learnt that the owner and author was a Dr of computer science, so he certainly knew his stuff and 99% of it goes over my head! e.g. this is a pdf version of a quill doc called control6_doc.

There are so many .p and _pas files all over the place!

I shall continue to sort through, perhaps removing personal stuff and then sharing the rest with you lot.