Evening all,

I'm writing up more of the sqdosmsq.dunbar-it.co.uk website and I'm 
looking into the format of the QXL.WIN format hard drive much beloved of 
QXL and QPC users.

Now I've hex dumped a 30 MB 'win' drive and I'm going through it using 
the brief details I had of the QLWA format also found on the above 
website. Doing so has pointed out a couple of bugs in the docs I had for 
QLWA but no-one has noticed since about 2001 so I presume no-one read it!

Take a look at what I've decoded so far (not much) here at

  http://www.qdosmsq.dunbar-it.co.uk/doku.php?id=qdosmsq:fs:qlwa

and point out any errors in my assumptions etc.

I have a few questions, some I've already forgotten - the joys of 
getting on in years - but those I can remember are :

* What is the point of the map-groups seeming ability to hold either a 
zero word (I assume it's a word) that simply seems to be the map number 
itself?

* My root directory number is $10 (16 decimal) - so what? How do I get 
from there to the actual address that it starts at in the file which 
looks like it is at $8040 (32,832)?

* How do I find out where the actual blocks of a file are on disc, given 
that the map appears (at least so far) to be pointless?

* The map apparently takes up $3D (61) sectors or $7A00 (31,232) bytes. 
The directory starts at $8040 so what are all those zeros doing between 
the two addresses?

* The first free group is $338f - what is this telling me. Looking into 
the actual map for that offset simply shows a word of, $338F. It looks 
no different to any other entry.

I'm sure I'll have other questions as time goes by, but for not the 
above will have to do.


Thanks.


Norman.
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