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Table of Contents
Related Manuals for Sinclair QL-SD
Summary of Contents for Sinclair QL-SD
- Page 1 QL-SD User Manual...
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Page 2: Table Of Contents
3.1. Opening the QL Case.......................... 7 3.2. ROM / EPROM Considerations ......................7 3.3. Installing the QL-SD Main PCB ......................7 3.4. Installing the QL-SD SDHC Daughter Board ..................8 3.4.1. Microdrive Removal........................8 3.4.2. Daughterboard Installation ......................9 3.5. Reassembly............................9 4. - Page 3 16. Disclaimer..............................25 QL-SD User Manual...
- Page 4 By the time of writing this document, the following incompatibilities between QL- SD and standard QL hardware were known: 1. QL-SD is not working reliably (sometimes it is not even working at all) in QLs equipped with the Miracle Gold Card. It is thus not recommended to use it together with this extension.
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Page 5: Introduction
Microdrives now nearing their 30th year tend to break a lot and replacements are very hard to find. QL-SD has been put together for you by a number of QL enthusiasts, some of them are listed in the acknowledgements section. -
Page 6: Backup
- just take your time and don't force it. Important note regarding keyboard membranes In order to install QL-SD, you will need to open up the QL case and handle its inner parts. QL keyboard membranes usually become brittle with age and tend to break easily when moved (and you need to do that when installing QL-SD), resulting in a non-working keyboard. -
Page 7: Opening The Ql Case
ROMs, remove only one of them, once QL-SD is installed, it is going to be re-fitted on top of QL-SD. If you want to go with QL-SDs EPROM, remove both original ROMs (IC33, IC34). Actually, it does not matter which of the ROM sockets is used –... -
Page 8: Installing The Ql-Sd Sdhc Daughter Board
IC notch faces to the back of the QL. Put the ROM into the inner rows of connectors on the QL-SD and push it back in, cautiously watching you do not bend the pins and all of them are properly inserted in the socket. -
Page 9: Daughterboard Installation
Once you have verified this, you can put the screws back in place. Hardware cracks with some experience in soldering might want to remove the QL-SD drive LED from the daughterboard and instead connect the original QL microdrive LED in the case with two short pieces of wire and a connector. -
Page 10: First Steps With Ql-Sd
The most extreme case is with an unexpanded QL: Originally, we thought it wouldn’t even work with QL-SD - But a file system size of 3 MB seems to be the optimum working setup leaving just about enough free memory to be able to do at least some sensible work with it - Maybe it’s about... -
Page 11: Unexpanded Ql
This should give you a directory of the QL-SD file system (note you will not see the same files as when you do a directory of the card in your PC - QL-SD does not operate directly on the SD card, but instead in a file system image within the QL_BDI.BIN file.) -
Page 12: Changing Sd Cards
4.4. Changing SD Cards Keeping in mind that QL-SD has been designed as special type of „hard disk“ for your QL and is also handled that way by the operating system, you might wonder whether you can change SD Cards during operation. The simple answer for the casual QL user is: Don’t do it. Computers aren’t made to have their hard disks changed while running. -
Page 13: Data Exchange With Your Pc
For a lot of users that are used to be using only floppy disks (or even microdrives), the huge capa- city of storage that you can have with QL-SD might be some sort of „Culture Clash“. This chapter gives some general recommendations on how to adapt your organisation of data and ways of work- ing with this huge amount of storage. -
Page 14: Organise Your Disk Space
6.2.2. Create a WORK_ directory With a large disk like QL-SD, it is very easy to end up with a completely cluttered root directory after some time of work - Make sure that when you start a new project (programming, word processing, whatever...), you create a new directory under sdc1_work_ and put everything that... -
Page 15: Use Dup, Ddown, Data_Use And Prog_Use
Q-Trans (Part of Launchpad, but freeware - Note needs sdc_use win or a patch to work with QL-SD Launchpad (commercial) Pointer Environment FiFi (Jochen Merz, commercial) - A fast file finder that helps you locate files by content or name. QL-SD User Manual... -
Page 16: Preparing The Sdhc Card
This is about all you need to know to be able to work with your QL-SD as a Hard Disk replacement. The rest of this manual can actually be skipped in case you are content with mass storage you have now ;) Most of the S*Basic commands that come with the driver will only needed for troubleshooting 7. -
Page 17: Preparing The Ql File System Image
So the next step is to create the DOS-File that will actually hold the QL file system. As mentioned above, QL-SD comes with a number of pre-created file system images of various sizes - If you can’t find one that suits your specific needs, you can create your own images: A QL image file can easily be created on a PC using the tool MakeImage.exe tool that should have come with... - Page 18 On an expanded QL, this should not be a problem unless you specify a ridiculously large file system - On an unexpanded box, it is - A large one. Group size is the size (in 512-byte-sized sectors) of an allocation block on disk. The QL-SD User Manual...
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Page 19: Ql-Sd Driver S*Basic Procedures And Functions
The most extreme case is with an unexpanded QL: Originally, we thought it wouldn’t even work with QL-SD - But a Group Size of 8 and a file system size of 3 MB seems to be the optimum working setup - Maybe it’s about time you consider expanding your QL’s memory? -
Page 20: Mount Number {, Drive, Partition
Before a storage device can be used it has to be mounted as a QL drive. There are eight drive numbers associated with the QL-SD driver: SDC1 to SDC8. Any partition on any physical drive that the QL-SD recognises can be mounted as any one of those drive numbers. -
Page 21: Sdc_Use Name
8.4. SDC_USE Name$ Change the device name of the driver. It is possible to rename the QL-SD driver to something else. This can, for example, be useful for compatibility with older programs that cannot recognise devices other than those installed on the basic QL. You can use any three characters. These must be upper case, and the fourth character must always be a zero. -
Page 22: Direct Sector Access
11.1. Device Name The name of the QL-SD device is normally sdc. If this causes problems on your system, or you wish to change it for some other reason, you may alter the name of the device with the SDC_USE... -
Page 23: Buffers
Load driver with SDC_START command The QL can then be booted as normal by pressing F1 or F2. If you then wish to load the QL-SD driver at a later time, you must use the SDC_START command. -
Page 24: The Address Map
As QL-SD lives in ROM space, there is actually no direct way for the QL 68008 CPU to write access the QL-SD registers. A write of one single byte to QL-SD is thus initiated by a read acess to a specific QL-SD register bank offset by the value of the byte to be written to QL-SD - The CPLD translates this into a write into its data register. -
Page 25: Acknowledgements
Disclaimer QL-SD / EDDE 2 is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. - Page 26 QL-SD is a team of hobbyists that neither make any money from it nor have the time to support you with fixing broken parts, damaged partitions and exploded file systems. Before you care to bother us, thoroughly try yourself, or try and find someone around you with a bit of QL experience who might be able to support you.