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Couple of SD suggestions.

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 8:10 pm
by prime
Hi all,

Just got my QLFloppySD setup going and another for a friend of mine, during testing we found a couple of minor glitches with the default setup....

1) The version of Toolkit II supplied on the card is *VERY* old :) replaced it with Marcel's 2.31 update from https://www.kilgus.net/2017/03/19/toolk ... he-sequel/

2) The way the boot file works, you get an error if you try and boot on anything before JS, so I have split it into two parts, the first that just loads TKII and then does an lrun sdc1_boot2.
This means that it will work ok on JM and AH roms.

Cheers.

Phill.

Re: Couple of SD suggestions.

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 11:09 pm
by RWAP
Just wondering what you mean by QLFloppySD ?

There are several SD card type solutions now:
QL-SD - internal interface.
QubIDE with IDE connector (and possibly SD to IDE adaptor)
Tetroid Disk Interface (combined Trump Card and QubIDE with built in Compact Flash adaptor and disk drive connectors)
vDriveQL - SD card interface designed to be housed inside a ZX Microdrive unit.

Re: Couple of SD suggestions.

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 11:59 pm
by tofro
The "sdc1_" device name strongly hints to QL-SD.

The Toolkit modernized by Marcel is more modern and aligned (shares a single code base) with SMSQ/E, but doesn't really offer more functionality (I don't even think that it's known to fix any bugs).

As QL-SD normally comes with the Minerva ROM, I wouldn't really consider the BOOT file a problem - Whoever is able to change the ROM, can be expected to be able to change the BOOT file as well.

Tobias

Re: Couple of SD suggestions.

Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 2:31 am
by prime
Hi all,

QLFloppySD is a card I designed it's basically a merger of a TrumpCard but implemented with static RAM and a CPLD but otherwise funtionally identical. Also onboard it has anothe CPLD that implements a slightly changed version* of the code from the original. Compared to the ones Rich listed, it's probably closest to Tetroid's trumpcard clone, except with SD instead of IDE.

*I've implemented a propper write register rather than having to capture the data lines, and also handshaking to make sure bytes have been completely sent / recieved before trying to read them.

A modification to the ROM is that it has the QL-SD driver instead of the TKII ROM that would normally be there.

Also in this machine I have one of my QIMI / ROM switcher boards that has a PS/2 mouse -> QIMI + a big flash rom that can have up to 8 system and 8 cartridge roms stored in it, which can be selected with a poke & reset.

Some pictures here on FB : https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 02d1006de8

The album is public so you don't need a FB account to view :)
And before anyone asks, I currently have no plans on manufacturing either board at the moment, both are still works in progress, I may do a small production run and (or) open source them so other people can make them if they want :)


The point with the included version of the Trumpcard ROM is that it doesn't for example pint -> next to directories, and seems to have a known bug in it's handling of overwrite messages, which is why I updated it as it *DID* fix some bugs by doing so. Bas (doen't appear to be on this forum but is TheCorfiot on several other forums) and I also think that it was affecting the microdrive performance on his machine, but I have not tested this. Replacing TKII certainly seemed to cure it for him.

Cheers.

Phill.

Re: Couple of SD suggestions.

Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 9:10 am
by Derek_Stewart
prime wrote:Hi all,

QLFloppySD is a card I designed it's basically a merger of a TrumpCard but implemented with static RAM and a CPLD but otherwise funtionally identical. Also onboard it has anothe CPLD that implements a slightly changed version* of the code from the original. Compared to the ones Rich listed, it's probably closest to Tetroid's trumpcard clone, except with SD instead of IDE.

*I've implemented a propper write register rather than having to capture the data lines, and also handshaking to make sure bytes have been completely sent / recieved before trying to read them.

A modification to the ROM is that it has the QL-SD driver instead of the TKII ROM that would normally be there.

Also in this machine I have one of my QIMI / ROM switcher boards that has a PS/2 mouse -> QIMI + a big flash rom that can have up to 8 system and 8 cartridge roms stored in it, which can be selected with a poke & reset.

Some pictures here on FB : https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 02d1006de8

The album is public so you don't need a FB account to view :)
And before anyone asks, I currently have no plans on manufacturing either board at the moment, both are still works in progress, I may do a small production run and (or) open source them so other people can make them if they want :)


The point with the included version of the Trumpcard ROM is that it doesn't for example pint -> next to directories, and seems to have a known bug in it's handling of overwrite messages, which is why I updated it as it *DID* fix some bugs by doing so. Bas (doen't appear to be on this forum but is TheCorfiot on several other forums) and I also think that it was affecting the microdrive performance on his machine, but I have not tested this. Replacing TKII certainly seemed to cure it for him.

Cheers.

Phill.
Hi Phil,

Your QLFloppySD card looks great, please put me down for a board when you produce the PCBs, I can solder SMD components, so maybe a base PCB as well.

Re: Couple of SD suggestions.

Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 12:23 pm
by Peter
prime wrote:QLFloppySD is a card I designed it's basically a merger of a TrumpCard but implemented with static RAM and a CPLD but otherwise funtionally identical. Also onboard it has anothe CPLD that implements a slightly changed version* of the code from the original. Compared to the ones Rich listed, it's probably closest to Tetroid's trumpcard clone, except with SD instead of IDE.
Looks like a very nice hardware. In principle, IDE has no speed advantage over SDHC in a QL, so I had already wondered why nobody was going that direction.
prime wrote:*I've implemented a propper write register rather than having to capture the data lines, and also handshaking to make sure bytes have been completely sent / recieved before trying to read them.
Does this refer to the QL-SD portion of your hardware? If you refer to the write emulation from the ROM socket heritage of QL-SD, it used address lines for data.
It would indeed be good to make your SD interface directly writeable.
If you run the interface with the same clock as QL-SD, you don't need handshaking to make sure bytes have been completely sent / recieved. It is always faster than the QL bus. Handshake would just waste speed.
prime wrote:A modification to the ROM is that it has the QL-SD driver instead of the TKII ROM that would normally be there.
Have you been able to amend the driver to your (assumed) write register already?
prime wrote:The album is public so you don't need a FB account to view :)
For me it was a pain, as the annoying "login / create account" window came up again and again. If you like, please post a pic here.

Cheers, Peter