The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi all, have my vDrive up and running. Can read and write to it... but so far running any games on the vDrive as mdv3_ are all failing.

Game loads but everyone so far fails to run.

Example... Speedfreaks... loads.. but then error comes up on screen.

The screen shows it us trying to run Speedfreaks as that does show but below it shows.

Error reads "At line 330 not found"

Seems every game from every image I load I get similar errors.

Tried Packman... get an At line 30 not found.

Another example... Metropolis... get error At line 35 not found.

Final example Assault... error at line 270.. and sure enough.. looking for something on mdv1_ when I look at the code.

Could it be I am trying to run as mdv3_ and they are expecting to be on mdv1_?

Any way around this?

I don't use or have vMap.

Any tips would be great!

TJ

SinclairSociety wrote: Could it be I am trying to run as mdv3_ and they are expecting to be on mdv1_?

Yes, that'll be exactly what it is. Have a look at those lines and change the path to MDV3_ (some are likely to be FLP1_ or of course MDV1_).

That might fix some of them, but a lot of stuff has the paths hard coded (i.e. within the bytes in exe files or similar code files) and not just in the SuperBasic loader. Those are more problematic.

Ha... so with at least Assault, I changed the code to mdv3_ and she runs...

Almost seems I need to get this vMap device. Unless I want to change every program.

Shoot.

Guessing there is no other trick?

TJ

I've actually been editing all this stuff outside of vDrive. The config file is easy to set up in Notepad on a Windows machine once you get the hang of the format. You can also go in and find reference of mdv1 or flp1 in the .MDV files and change it to whatever mdv you have it set to in your vDrive config (for me mdv3 through mdv8 with like 5 banks for all of the games).

My first official game played on QL is Assault.

LOL

TJ

SinclairSociety wrote: Guessing there is no other trick?

TJ

This works for me with a vDrive, but I also have a Trump card with a RAM disk via the TDI Tetroid device and the RAM_USE thing, is I believe only available via the Trump card, so may be completely useless for your setup!

1. Copy the contents of the mdv3_ device to ram1_ by entering "format ram1_mdv3".

2. Enter "ram_use mdv" which will change all the MDV1_ references to point at RAM1_.

3. With the files from MDV3_ now in RAM1_ (from that format command, step 1) you can now enter "dir mdv1_" and it will show you the content of RAM1_ thinking that it's MDV1_

4. Enter "lrun mdv1_X", where X is the boot file name.

Thanks... don't think I can do that but will remember if I get that trump card.
TJ

Chr$ wrote:

SinclairSociety wrote: Guessing there is no other trick?

TJ

This works for me with a vDrive, but I also have a Trump card with a RAM disk via the TDI Tetroid device and the RAM_USE thing, is I believe only available via the Trump card, so may be completely useless for your setup!

1. Copy the contents of the mdv3_ device to ram1_ by entering "format ram1_mdv3".

2. Enter "ram_use mdv" which will change all the MDV1_ references to point at RAM1_.

3. With the files from MDV3_ now in RAM1_ (from that format command, step 1) you can now enter "dir mdv1_" and it will show you the content of RAM1_ thinking that it's MDV1_

4. Enter "lrun mdv1_X", where X is the boot file name.

Chr$ wrote:

SinclairSociety wrote: Guessing there is no other trick?

TJ

This works for me with a vDrive, but I also have a Trump card with a RAM disk via the TDI Tetroid device and the RAM_USE thing, is I believe only available via the Trump card, so may be completely useless for your setup!

1. Copy the contents of the mdv3_ device to ram1_ by entering "format ram1_mdv3".

2. Enter "ram_use mdv" which will change all the MDV1_ references to point at RAM1_.

3. With the files from MDV3_ now in RAM1_ (from that format command, step 1) you can now enter "dir mdv1_" and it will show you the content of RAM1_ thinking that it's MDV1_

4. Enter "lrun mdv1_X", where X is the boot file name.

From what I remember, the Sandy SuperQBoard doesn't have the same RAMdisk extension. You can, however, create a RAMdisk manually and then copy to contents over manually.

e.g.

tk2_ext
format ram1_240
wcopy mdv1_ to ram1_
ram_use mdv
lrun mdv1_boot

Ah yes, you have a SuperQBoard. Good to go then!

Would there be a more automated way to do this at boot... where I can get a RAMdisk created with launch just one program and it does this below script?
TJ

stephen_usher wrote:

Chr$ wrote:

SinclairSociety wrote: Guessing there is no other trick?

TJ

This works for me with a vDrive, but I also have a Trump card with a RAM disk via the TDI Tetroid device and the RAM_USE thing, is I believe only available via the Trump card, so may be completely useless for your setup!

1. Copy the contents of the mdv3_ device to ram1_ by entering "format ram1_mdv3".

2. Enter "ram_use mdv" which will change all the MDV1_ references to point at RAM1_.

3. With the files from MDV3_ now in RAM1_ (from that format command, step 1) you can now enter "dir mdv1_" and it will show you the content of RAM1_ thinking that it's MDV1_

4. Enter "lrun mdv1_X", where X is the boot file name.

From what I remember, the Sandy SuperQBoard doesn't have the same RAMdisk extension. You can, however, create a RAMdisk manually and then copy to contents over manually.

e.g.

tk2_ext
format ram1_240
wcopy mdv1_ to ram1_
ram_use mdv
lrun mdv1_boot