The Sinclair QL Forum

ql_freak wrote: Tue Apr 01, 2025 6:35 pm Have now received the USB-disks (the inbuilt drive of my old stationary PC does not work ) and it works with QPC2 but neither with Q-Emulator (assigned A: to Slot 1) nor with UQLX on Windows with WSL2 (used DEVICE = /mnt/c/a in .uqlxrc) nor sQLux (tried DEVICE = A:/ and DEVICE = /mnt/c/a). I will look if theres something like SUBST (DOS command) for Windows, so that one can map the floppy drive to a directory?

Why /mnt/c/a? That would translate to C:\a

I dont personally use windows so Im not sure if DEVICE=FLP1,A:,qdos-like would work or not!

What absolutely wont work as windows doesnt have the same all devices are files as POSIX OSes, is DEVICE=FLP1,A:,qdos-native

I've not used the USB floppy drive directly with any emulators. I've used 'dd' to make a floppy image file and that works fine with the emulators. I don't plan on writing to floppy, but now I can archive the ones that I have.

Tim

@swensont, I tried a usb floppy on sqlux not long ago. I couldn't format it, but I could use the drive to boot from and write to it etc.

XorA wrote: Tue Apr 01, 2025 9:22 pm

ql_freak wrote: Tue Apr 01, 2025 6:35 pm Have now received the USB-disks (the inbuilt drive of my old stationary PC does not work ) and it works with QPC2 but neither with Q-Emulator (assigned A: to Slot 1) nor with UQLX on Windows with WSL2 (used DEVICE = /mnt/c/a in .uqlxrc) nor sQLux (tried DEVICE = A:/ and DEVICE = /mnt/c/a). I will look if theres something like SUBST (DOS command) for Windows, so that one can map the floppy drive to a directory?

Why /mnt/c/a? That would translate to C:\a

I dont personally use windows so Im not sure if DEVICE=FLP1,A:,qdos-like would work or not!

What absolutely wont work as windows doesnt have the same all devices are files as POSIX OSes, is DEVICE=FLP1,A:,qdos-native

Scratch that, if your an Administrator then DEVICE=FLP1,\\.\PhysicalDeviceX,qdos-native should work. replace X with the proper number for the floppy disk!

A Minerva ROM board for my spare QL from Chr$. Thanks Chris!

Looks very professional!

Arrived just in time for the weekend, planning to experiment with electronics...
Also got two of them with the SMDs already assembled.

Ooo! Intriguing project, Daniele!

Any comments to add???

M68008 wrote: Fri Apr 04, 2025 11:20 pm Arrived just in time for the weekend, planning to experiment with electronics...

A Raspberry Pico connected to the QL ROM port, to be more specific.
A new mass storage device or mouse interface maybe?
Just a little hint:
If you have no power supply plane, you should try to make the VCC traces wider.

Peter wrote: Sat Apr 05, 2025 3:34 pm Just a little hint:
If you have no power supply plane, you should try to make the VCC traces wider.

I appreciate the advice, thank you! I'll change it in the next version, it's currently 0.4 mm.
Better I don't show you the other side then as there is not even a ground plane. I plan to revisit that, but with so many traces across I just skipped it for the prototype.

It's only my second PCB project, if I exclude a MIDI interface for the QL I did in the 90s. My first one was a high resolution timer for the QL, as an exercise.