> >Perhaps that should read "Am I The Only Person Who Still Uses MDV > >Carts" or "who has working MDV drives" > > Well, strictly speaking I don't really use MDVs much these days; and given > that all my QLs are currently mothballed (or, rather, parked, seeing as > they're in the garage) I'm not currently using them at all. :-)
> However, I used a 128K MDV-only QL exclusively from 1984 to 1991 (IIRC) > before finally getting the MFP disk i/f & a 512k expanderam... Even then, I > only had a single 5.25" disk drive to use (I still have that entire setup). > > Mind you - I used my QL on a succession of black&white TVs for most of its > early life; I think my parents gave me a green screen monitor in 1988, and > I finally bought a colour one in 1991 or 2. Yes, looking back, amazing what we used to put up with all those years ago. When I first had a ZX81, It was mostly used on a Ferguson portable TV, or if I wanted to watch TV same time, it got plugged into a 5 inch mono TV which I had in the bedroom of my flat at the time. Barely readable, definitely not good for the eyes. > In all those years, BTW, I think I only ever had two cartridges fail & lose > data. There were only around 40 carts, and 20 of those had dad's tax data > on, so I only had 20 to use for years - so they did pretty darn well I > reckon. What's more, I can still read data off them to this very day; > compare & contrast this to all my early PC 3.5" disks, nearly all of which > are now kaputt. And they're all newer! I still have some of my old MDV cartridges, especially the master keys for games, they almost all still work when I occasionally fetch the black QL out of hibernation in the attic. But one drive is better than the other (MDV1 reads more cartridges than MDV2). The only one I had problems with was one of the version 1 Psion software cartridges when I put those on my website and PD library for collectors, I had to get help from Rich Mellor with one of the four. I was quite amazed that 3 out of 4 of even those ancient cartridges read OK. Amazing what FORMAT RAM1_MDV1 could achieve. After MDVs, I went to 5.25 inch disks. My drive will no longer read those, but some time ago I asked Chris Cave to help me copy some I'd had difficulty with. His drive worked! Compare that with some of the first 3.5 inch disks of mine. The sources and manuals for Page Designer 2 (the Sector Software version) were all on 3.5 inch disks and are unreadable now. They won't even read on Miracle ED drives. Those drives read just about anything! Some time ago, I'd meant to release a slightly updated PD2 as freeware (the old PD2 doesn't work on anything other than QL 512x256 mode 4) but I couldn't read the sources to update and recompile the program, so that idea went out of the window. We is it we store QLs or anything in garages apart from cars?????? Dilwyn Jones _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
