Hi folks, it's been a while... some might remember that I postponed my other QL projects in order to design a "microdrive style" SD card interface for the original QL.
I sometimes regret this decision, because the cost of time became immense. I based my driver software on the QL-HD driver from Dirk Steinkopf, which was originally made for XT harddisks. I liked his concept of a C language interface. But unfortunately the sourcecode for his stable releases was lost. So all I had were incomplete sources in an experimental state. I got the driver to work with SDHC cards by now, but fixes are still necessary. On the more positive software side: I wrote QL-native-side FAT32 image support for SDHC cards, which works well so far. This allows the same removable medium to be used directly in both native QL hardware and PC emulators. A feature which was only possible with floppy disks yet. Please note that QL files are not places directly into the FAT32 system, but into a container, a "block device image" file. This approach is similar to QXL.WIN, but allows easier interfacing for native drivers. The QL-SD hardware system has two parts: 1) A board which plugs into an internal QL ROM socket. It has a Minerva style EPROM socket on top. EPROMs with QL operating system plus QL-SD driver could be used here. 2) A board which is mounted behind a microdive slot inside the original QL case. After the microdrive has been removed (which is quite simple) the new SDHC-card drive can be mounted with two screws. SDHC cards can be inserted just like microdrives :-) The drive LED for the SDHC card is separate from the original microdrive LED, so no internal wiring must be changed. It is visible beside the card socket. Both parts are connected by simple a ribbon cable. I finished the printed circuit board redesign yesterday and ordered more prototyping boards. All the best Peter _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
