The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi

We have our first working QL with a Micro Peripherals disk interface and drive and I am trying to get programs onto a 3.5" floppy using a Q-emulator. It does have one working Microdrive but I am not happy about its long term reliability as an exhibit and isn't a valid device to get software onto the system.

Running qxltool then mounting the PC's A drive as a QDOS drive I can read software from a disk written on the QL but as soon as I write anything to the disk, it becomes unreadable in the real QL ?

Can anyone give me any tips on transferring programs from the PC to the QL via a 3.5" drive ?

Seems so close to working its a bit frustrating

Cheers.

Hi,

Download QPC2 which can read and write to PC,QL disks.

Not via the 3.5inch drive, but replacing that with a gotek with FlashFloppy installed is generally the easiest method of file transfer!

You can just put qltools generated images direct onto the USB dongle and read/write them!

XorA wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2024 7:31 pmNot via the 3.5inch drive

??? QPC can read QL floppies via an USB or native 3,5" drive.

RalfR wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2024 8:46 pm

XorA wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2024 7:31 pmNot via the 3.5inch drive

??? QPC can read QL floppies via an USB or native 3,5" drive.

Apply brain before posting?

Is the Micro Peripherals floppy disc format the same as other QL systems? Could that be the source of the incompatibility?

Obviously, if the Micro Peripherals interface has a QJump QFLP upgrade ROM it certainly ought to be compatible in that case.

Hi,

I use USB 3.5" Floppy drive on a Windows 7 laptop, the disks can be read and written to with QPC2 in PC and QL formatted disk formats.

QPC2 can format a disk to QL format that had been previousily formatted with Windows.

The data written onto the disk in QL Format can be read with a QXL on a 486 PC with standard floppy drives.

The same disk can be read by a Trump Card QL, with Double Density Drives. I have tried MicroP interface with a QFLP ROM installed, the disks which are formatted to Double Density (720K or 1440 sectors ) also are read.

I do not use a Gotek, but this is a good option, to save FLP image files, as floppy disks are getting hard to find.

dilwyn wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2024 9:43 pm Is the Micro Peripherals floppy disc format the same as other QL systems? Could that be the source of the incompatibility?

Obviously, if the Micro Peripherals interface has a QJump QFLP upgrade ROM it certainly ought to be compatible in that case.

IIRC, the original MP firmware used to write the header in a different location (the 64 bytes before the actual file, not the directory entry), so EXECable files lost their dataspace info. Also, direct sector access was not possible using the '*D' open method.

Apart from that, discs written using the original MP interface could be read using 'TT standard' firmware and vice versa.

Not a very scientific test, but I did the following on a Windows 10 Pro PC and a Windows 11 Home laptop with something called Mitsumi USB FDD:

Read the directory of a 720k Dos disk in Windows - Slow but fine
Read the directory of a 1440k Dos disk in Windows - Fine
Tried to read the directory of a 720k and a 1440k Qdos disk in Windows - No medium

Read the directory of a 720k Dos disk in QPC2 - Fine
Read the directory of a 1440k Dos disk in QPC2 - Fine
Read the directory of a 720k and a 1440k Qdos disk - Fine

Copied a file to and from the Qdos disks in QPC2 and confirmed they were there.
Re-formatted the 720k disk and copied a file to it, - Fine
Copied a file to one of the Dos disks in QPC2 and confirmed in Windows that it was there.

SMSQmulator doesnt appear to support physical floppy drives (although it does a good job with virtual ones).

Hmmm. This is a big (and, apparently controversial) topic.

The support for DS/DD 3.5" USB disks in Windows has kind of rotted away over the years.

Windows 7 could practically read/write QDOS disks just fine. In Windows 10 that support has officially been removed, DS/DD is no longer supported. (Though it does still work if you have the proper drive and use the proper driver, with some possible caveats).

My experience:

I have an old FUJIY USB drive that will, together with a legacy built-in driver ("NEC USB Floppy Disk") happily read and write DS/DD, absolutely flawlessly. Annoyingly, however, in my setup, Windows 10 insists that driver is the wrong one and, on every restart, automagically replaces that driver with a generic USB floppy driver that only supports 1.4M format. I have to: Again find the proper driver, re-install it, test it, and can then use floppies again in that session. How annoying. That's why I have based all my file transfers in my QL realm on SD cards and QXL images.

So, whether it works or not, depends on the drive, on the driver, and, apparently on how your windows machine can cope with the current moon phase, weather, your latitude and how stubborn your Windows installation is (mine's a lot of that).....