QL Commercial Software Preservation

[Dave]

I offer to help, and I have an extensive library of QUANTA magazines I can go through.

If you send me instructions in email, I'll let you know if I have any questions.

[RWAP]

Dave - surely you have enough to be getting along with (hardware wise )

But if you do have time that would be good - realistically, all we need at the moment are software reviews from the Quanta magazines - I wonder if this could be found using the Quanta magazine index program in the library?

Talking of Quanta - what is happening vis-a-vis making PDF copies of the magazine available in the Quanta area of the forum?

[Ralf R.]

I know the preservation team have been a little quiet over the past few days, but we have been busy in the background.

Meanwhile, Jochen Merz told me, that he has got in touch with you about his older programs. If you need programs, just ask.

[RWAP]

Ralf,

Email me with details of what programs you have by Jochen - we have a fair few, but have no idea if they are the latest versions as they are mainly from myself and Dilwyn.

The problem with ABC Elektronik continues - without resolving the copyright on titles written by Stefan Kuhne and Jochen for ABC, we cannot do anything with them... Did you have any luck in speaking with Andreas?

[Ralf R.]

Yes, the programs may have a version number, the games and toolkits may not. I will take a look.

[RWAP]

I was asked what we do to preserve QL software off microdrive recently, so I thought it may be useful giving some general advice and sharing our approach....

It is not particularly easy for preservation purposes - it may be necessary to replace the felt pad on the microdrive cartridges before even trying (as they can split and get inside the workings, jamming the tape).

You can use the simple Toolkit II command, WCOPY mdv2_ TO flp1_ to copy the cartridge to disk. However, I have a Trump Card which has a much more useful utility. FORMAT ram1_mdv2

Basically this command makes several attempts to read and copy every sector of the microdrive cartridge onto a ram disk (ie, held in memory). It will try to read bad sectors 3 or 4 times and if it gives up, it still stores the damaged sector and marks the filename with an asterisk at the end, so you can see which files are damaged and may need work.

The files in the ram disk are then copied to disk with WCOPY ram1_ TO flp1_

If there are still corrupt files, I will try a couple more times again (as it sometimes works), and if that does not work, then hopefully, I have a backup copy of the cartridge which may have different corrupt files or bad sectors.

It is then worth trying the cartridge in a different microdrive slot or on a different QL, as not all microdrive units have the same characteristics.

Only if the number of sectors being read drops off substantially, do I give up!

[Dave]

Good info, Rich.

I do have a Trump Card here. I have been using Cartridge Doctor, but that just ate itself. If only I had some kind of utility to recover it...

[RWAP]

I will email you a copy of Cartridge Doctor when I am on my main PC Dave...

[Dave]

Good God! He even has a back-up PC!

[Wimdev]

I have a working version and manual of the Adder Assembler that went with Adrian Dickens' "QL advanced user guide", published by Adder Publishing. The QL wiki claims it is missing in action, so is there interest in a copy for preservation purposes?

Willem