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using floppy drives with gold card

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2023 5:43 pm
by Traindriver69
Hi all
I have both a gold card and trump card and wish to plug in a floppy drive I have some 3 1/4 drives but cant get them to do anything when plugged into the cards but I also have a 5 1/4 drive and works fine.
Do I need to do something to the 3 1/4 drives first or is there only certain ones the QL like.
Many Thanks

Re: using floppy drives with gold card

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2023 6:44 pm
by XorA
Another 1/4 of an inch! :D

But if they are PC drives they will be DS1 and not DS0 that QL expects.

Re: using floppy drives with gold card

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2023 6:53 pm
by Dave
All future designs of floppy interfaces for the QL should have a bit flip jumper that just puts the drive select line through an inverter.

QL<->PC

Problem solved.

*writes in little black book*

Re: using floppy drives with gold card

Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2023 8:10 pm
by Derek_Stewart
Hi,

All PC Flopy drives are setp as drive 1, with the Drive Selector set to DS1. This simplified manfacture of drives on PCs.

There is a twist in the floppy disk cable to alter the drive mapping.
On a QL FLP1=DS0, FLP2=DS1

To use a PC disk drive set to DS1, which be registered as FLP2, the floppy cable lines 10,11,12 need to twisted to so that 10-12, 11-11, 12-10, wil map the drive as FLP1

The Trump Card can access drives up to Double Density (720K), with a maximum of 4 drives.
The Gold Card can access drives up High Density (1.44Mb) and maybe ED disks, if the drives and disks are available.

I can supply suitable cable for using PC drives on a QL.