Re: [Ql-Users] Ql-Users Digest, Vol 227, Issue 1
Hi Paul. I don't recall having any of the 2068 cartridge boards. As I never really got into the 2068 I probably wouldn't have had much interest in them. Not saying I don't have them buried in a box somewhere, I just don't recall having any. Let's see if Don remembers or knows if he had any. If not I can do some digging. On 5/31/23 4:54 PM, Paul Holmgren via Ql-Users wrote: I Spy John and Don here. I still sample the message traffic here every now and then. Perchance did either one of you keep the stack of bare 2068 cartridge port boards you guys got from me?? Seems they can still be put to use. Paul Holmgren JCI 74145 On Wednesday, May 31, 2023 at 03:04:03 PM EDT, ql-users-requ...@lists.q-v-d.com wrote: Send Ql-Users mailing list submissions to ql-users@lists.q-v-d.com To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.q-v-d.com/listinfo.cgi/ql-users-q-v-d.com or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to ql-users-requ...@lists.q-v-d.com You can reach the person managing the list at ql-users-ow...@lists.q-v-d.com When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of Ql-Users digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Old QL user getting back in touch (Don Walterman) 2. Re: Old QL user getting back in touch (Dilwyn Jones) 3. Re: Old QL user getting back in touch (Rod H) 4. Re: Old QL user getting back in touch (John Impellizzeri) -- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 31 May 2023 11:12:37 -0600 From: Don Walterman To: ql-us...@q-v-d.com Subject: [Ql-Users] Old QL user getting back in touch Message-ID: <1f78ee74-3903-0971-ec88-4802794fa...@ix.netcom.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Hello All, I was into the QL and Z88 in the 80's and 90's. Semi-retired now and just getting back into all things QL related. I have a few thousand messages to read on this list to catch up... I have fond memories of meeting many of you at QL get togethers like QL Boston in 96 and the one in Portland... Don -- Message: 2 Date: Wed, 31 May 2023 18:33:29 +0100 From: Dilwyn Jones To: ql-us...@q-v-d.com Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] Old QL user getting back in touch Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Welcome back Don. I remember reading articles by you in IQLR years ago. I'd seriously suggest joining QL Forum (qlforum.co.uk) too, if you have not already done so. And if you're on Facebook, try the Sinclair QL For Everyone group. Loads of QL users on both sites. Best wishes. Dilwyn On Wed, 31 May 2023 at 18:17, Don Walterman via Ql-Users wrote: Hello All, I was into the QL and Z88 in the 80's and 90's. Semi-retired now and just getting back into all things QL related. I have a few thousand messages to read on this list to catch up... I have fond memories of meeting many of you at QL get togethers like QL Boston in 96 and the one in Portland... Don ___ QL-Users Mailing List -- Message: 3 Date: Wed, 31 May 2023 17:34:15 + From: Rod H To: "ql-us...@q-v-d.com" Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] Old QL user getting back in touch Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I remember you. Best regards, Rod Humphreys From: Ql-Users on behalf of Don Walterman via Ql-Users Sent: 31 May 2023 10:12 To: ql-us...@q-v-d.com Cc: Don Walterman Subject: [Ql-Users] Old QL user getting back in touch Hello All, I was into the QL and Z88 in the 80's and 90's. Semi-retired now and just getting back into all things QL related. I have a few thousand messages to read on this list to catch up... I have fond memories of meeting many of you at QL get togethers like QL Boston in 96 and the one in Portland... Don ___ QL-Users Mailing List -- Message: 4 Date: Wed, 31 May 2023 15:03:07 -0400 From: John Impellizzeri To: ql-us...@q-v-d.com Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] Old QL user getting back in touch Message-ID: <7ccc6b38-dfdf-f3ff-9569-9c27a1e5b...@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Hey Don! Welcome back and great to hear from you again. The list has been pretty quiet lately. And yes, many fond memories of QL show road trips to Rhode Island, Tennessee, Boston and PA. Not quite retired here yet, got a few more years to go but I still play around with QL and Sinclair related things. John On 5/31/23 1:12 PM, Don Walterman via Ql-Users wrote: Hello All, I was into the QL and Z88 in the 80's and 90's. Semi-retired now and just getting back into all things QL related. I have a few thousand messages to read on this list to catch up... I have fond memories of meeting many of you at QL get togethers
Re: [Ql-Users] Old QL user getting back in touch
Hey Don! Welcome back and great to hear from you again. The list has been pretty quiet lately. And yes, many fond memories of QL show road trips to Rhode Island, Tennessee, Boston and PA. Not quite retired here yet, got a few more years to go but I still play around with QL and Sinclair related things. John On 5/31/23 1:12 PM, Don Walterman via Ql-Users wrote: Hello All, I was into the QL and Z88 in the 80's and 90's. Semi-retired now and just getting back into all things QL related. I have a few thousand messages to read on this list to catch up... I have fond memories of meeting many of you at QL get togethers like QL Boston in 96 and the one in Portland... Don ___ QL-Users Mailing List ___ QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] Four hard drives on the same Qbide
Giorgio, I remember this and actually have the IDE Expander as it was called. I don’t remember if it was demonstrated or shown at one of the US shows but I do at least remember it was talked about and I eventually ordered one from QUBBESoft. I only attended the US shows so it very well could have been shown at others. I still have the paperwork that came with it. I never could get it to work however. I don’t know if it was my QubIDE as I had an early version or it may have been due to the bus expander I was using. It was a small circuit board with a 40 pin IDE socket and another small socket next to it that when plugged in connected to the 6 pin header on the QubIDE. There are a few diodes and a small surface mount IC on the board as well. This side of the board was painted black so it covers the IC number. There was no circuit diagram in the documentation. A 50 pin ribbon cable was attached. One edge of the cable has 10 of the wires separated out and these are connected in various combinations to the 40 pin connectors as drive select lines I presume. The documentation said to jumper each drive as a master and went on to explain how to use the WIN_DRIVE command to assign the drives. It was recommended to use ROM v1.35 or later and was supposed to identify all drives at power up. I don’t recall now what problem I had with it just that I couldn’t get it to work and set it aside. I don’t think the list will accept attachments but if you want further info or pictures let me know with your email address and I can send it to you. John > On Apr 27, 2018, at 10:29 AM, Giorgio Garabello via Ql-Users > wrote: > > Many years ago I read somewhere that it was possible to connect 4 hard > drives on the same Qbide, an Italian user has confirmed to me that "Nasta" > demonstrated this to some meeting. > None of us remember the details, where can I find information about it? > Thanks in advance to everyone. > > Giorgio > ___ > QL-Users Mailing List ___ QL-Users Mailing List
Re: [Ql-Users] QxlwinReader
Hi all, I’ve been following this thread with some interest as I still have some QL hardware (SGC/Qubide/Aurora) which I recently converted from a spinning IDE hard drive to a Compact Flash card using an adapter. I then added an additional adapter with an external slot to use as a backup medium. As a further backup I moved the backup CF card to a Mac with a card reader and used dd to make an image file of the card. By writing the image back to another card with dd and verifying that the QL could still read it I knew that this process was successful. When I read about QXLwinreader I was interested as I’d like to start playing with the various emulators again but moving software to them from my real QL via floppies wasn’t sounding like much fun. I tried QXLwinreader on my dd image but it was not recognized as a valid image file. Then I read the post about the file possibly needing conversion due to the 68K being big-endian. Since I was running QXLwinreader on a Mac with an Intel cpu (little-endian) I ran dd on the file again using the conv=swab option and I can report that QXLwinreader happily accepts the converted file and I can peruse through files and directories in it. I haven’t tried copying any files yet in either direction as I have to set up a QXLwin file yet but it looks promising now. For reference the converison process was quick only taking seconds on my 7 year old Mac. One image file was 512MB and the other was 1GB. Here was the command I used: dd if= of= conv=swab As for the floppy format problem I have a Gold Card here somewhere, I will try to find it and hope it still works and do some testing with it. I can confirm that my SuperGold Card system with Aurora running recent SMSQ/E versions does have some trouble formatting floppies although I’m pretty sure I can format HD but not ED disks in ED drives. I’ll have to test again with DD disks as I don’t remember if I tried this. I can read an existing ED disk, not sure if I can write to one. I know I have been able to read and write to DD and HD disks. The format command does seem to cause the drive to make some strange sounds at first before settling in to the normal stepping routine as it formats the disk. > On Jun 21, 2017, at 3:25 AM, Wolfgang Lenerz via Ql-Users > wrote: > > 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) > > Whilst it's true that this was written with these cards in mind, I'm not sure > about this statement. If you have a PC that still has the connections for > your hard disk (I presume it's IDE ?), using DD (or equivalent) might be the > fastest way to get your data off that disk. > > I think I can confidently state that if I had an image file with several > partitions, I could probably figure them out pretty quickly and amend > QxlwinReader so that it can handle them. > > Tracks/cylinders/heads would be more difficult. > >> Talking more in general I think it is a pity that some possibile >> implementations or bug fixes are becoming very difficult if not impossible >> just because lack of the native hardware to test to the few people which >> have the knowledge to solve these issues. I wonder how this could be >> improved. > > Yes, not being able to reproduce and trace a bug is a problem. For example, > some time back, a problem with SMSQ/E for the Atari was reported to me. I > used to have some Ataris (and still had/have them but not in working > condition). So there wasn't much I could do, until I stumbled upon an Atari > emulator for the PC, which at least allowed me to see and even test the > problem, and eventually figure out what went wrong. That was pure dumb luck! > > As you rightly point out, without the actual hardware this is going to become > practically impossible - not only to fix, but even just to check whether the > problem exists (a case in point : some recent QXL screen problem, one user > (Andrea) reported a problem, I had a look at the code to try to find out why > but couldn't, and then another user (Bob) said that it worked OK...). > > I'm not sure what can be done about this situation. Perhaps your solution, to > supply actual hardware to people still fixing things might work. Without > false modesty, I think I can safely say that most recent development for > SMSQ/E has been done by Marcel, and to a much lesser degree, by me. I won't > presume to speak for Marcel, so this only goes for myself : I'm just not sure > that I'd want more hardware here! > > Also, don't forget that working on SMSQ/E is purely a voluntary work. > For me, there is a big difference between writing something new like the > recent Thing, and then fixing the problems I inevitably introduce on the one > hand, and fixing other bugs, on the other hand. > > Si
