The Sinclair QL Forum

Are their USB floppy disk devices (controller and drive) which are compatible with:

Windows 10

AND

QPC2

? QPC2 runs perfectly in Windows 10, but I can't access the floppy disk drive. The disk drive/interface is OK(!). I have testet it with MenuetOS which starts perfectly from the disk.

But the same disk (A:) doesn't work in windows 10, so I ask, if there are USB floppy disk drives, which are compatible with QPC2 and Windows 10.

p.s.: It would be sufficient if they support just reading of normal files (no sector access or similar).

I just tried my USB floppy with QPC2 and it works fine on Windows 10 - It is a Toshbia USB FDD - PA3109U-1FDD

I have now bought an USB floppy disk drive from xystec, in Germany available from PEARL (http://www.pearl.de). It works without any driver (just connect to an USB jack) on the latest version of Windows 10 (maps automatically to drive A: - I have disabled my mainboard floppy disk support in the BIOS, but don't know if this is necessary) and also in QPC2 V 4.04. Power is supplied via the USB port, no extra power supply can be connected.

I have until now only tested normal reading (e. g. EXECuting and COPYing files), no writing and no sector access. Under Windows I have not tested if DISKCOPY will work. The most important thing for me is to be able to read files from the disk (so that I can copy them to a WINn_ device).

Sincerely Peter

The only one I could fnd was this:http://www.pearl.de/a-PX4803-1163.shtml
Is this the correct working USB floppy for QL usage under win10?
Kind regards
Paul

Yes, this is the device I have bought.

It works, but now I have detected, that I could not read a lot of old disks because of:

Medium Check Failed (Bad Medium on a normal QL)

I will try an exchange device from PEARL, cause I can read these floppies on my other PC without any problems (Native floppy and with Windows XP operating system).

EDIT 2017 Jan 02: See this post.

Sincerely Peter

It might be a bit of a roundabout way of doing it. But You say you can read the disks OK on another PC, Why not convert the disks to image files on the other PC and then read the image files in QPC2 on the Windows 10 machine. QPC2 V4 can mount HD (2880 sector image files) directly as FLP1_ or FLP2_

If your disks are not all HD's, then try the FDI2 device driver http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/utils/index.html It supports disk images from SD up to ED.

Martin Head

Note that some of the things that can go wrong are:

You cannot re-format a disk that was originally formatted on a DD drive on an HD drive. The tracks are wider on DD and a HD drive is not able to erase all of the information the DD drive has put on the disk. Such disks either need to be erased entirely using a (very) strong magnet or need to be re-formatted on a DD drive.

The last Windows version that officially supported the DD disk format was Windows XP - Newer versions need some tricks from the command line (Windows 7) or won't format at all with DD disks (Windows 10, at least I have yet to see a solution). Note this is only related to formatting. Read and write should still work.

I use a Fuji USB floppy disk drive on QPC above Mac Parallels in Windows 7. Reformatting of disks I intend to use on a native QL DD drive I normally do on the native QL system - Reason see above.

Tobias

Also this link may be interesting:

http://techgeekandmore.com/2016/07/26/g ... -8-win-10/

Cristian wrote:Also this link may be interesting:

I use the very same driver for my Fuji drive

Great!