Hi Davide,

> The DD Unix utility might be of course an interesting option but
> maybe it could be more useful for SD cards written with the QL-SD
> interface rather than a Qubide hard disk (especially if it has
> more than one partition)

There might still be a misunderstanding, because the DD utitly is 
completely useless for QL-SD.

DD can convert a raw media (Qubide formatted in this case) to an 
image file. 

But QL-SD already has the Qubide partitions in an image file! It 
does *not* have Qubide raw media, although that would have made it 
easier to get a working driver.

The whole reason I initially wrote the QL-side FAT32 code, is to 
save the step of converting raw media to image files. Or in other 
words, the basic concept of QL-SD is *not* to need tools like DD.

On QL-SD you can directly read the Qubide image file from a PC, for 
instance with QxlwinReader or an emulator. 

By the way, the same approach could also be taken for Qubide IDE 
harddisks! The IDE harddisk (or compact flash, etc.) could be 
formatted in FAT32, and then have Qubide inside an image file like 
QL-SD. That way, DD would no longer be needed. Now that the QL-side 
FAT32 code is there, it could be re-used. Maybe Alain could comment 
on this?

The only remaining issue would be to convert old "raw" Qubide 
harddisks once. 

> I think maintaining compatibility and support of native QL
> hardware should have some priority.

I agree, insasmuch retro-computing becomes pointless if it lives 
only on emulation. Whereever I saw people returning to the QL in the 
recent years, it was hardware-related.

All the best
Peter

_______________________________________________
QL-Users Mailing List

Reply via email to