The Sinclair QL Forum

I've released a new QL-SD driver for anybody fortunate enough to possess one You can read the details here: https://www.kilgus.net/2020/05/17/ql-sd-driver-v1-09/

Downloads for the impatient are here https://www.kilgus.net/ql/ql-sd/

mk79 wrote:I've released a new QL-SD driver for anybody fortunate enough to possess one You can read the details here: https://www.kilgus.net/2020/05/17/ql-sd-driver-v1-09/

Downloads for the impatient are here https://www.kilgus.net/ql/ql-sd/

Great, this is a big enhancement .
Lucky me I have new business for my new eprom programmer

I have something in mind that I want to ask regarding donation and funding for a project.

There are very few people in QL arena that can develop evaluable enhancement/program and I fully understand the effort and time spending on this, and again I fully understand the need/(moral)satisfaction in being rewarded.
I have already donated few penny to people for his work and I am ready again to "donate" for something of my interest.

We should have a poll first about how many projects are people interested in and then to organise a crowdfunding, this without any implication in responsibility in time and acceptability

As a stupid example: I am interested in all networking aspects and I would pay a reasonable amount for TCP/IP driver for QL and derivatives .

Fabrizio

Well, you were one of the very few that did this out of the blue, which be assured made me pretty happy

In any case I'm not doing this for money, not by far. At a normal commercial rate the time I spent on QL projects over the last few years was probably worth a six-figure value (don't tell my wife). I do this because I want to or in some cases I at least feel some obligation to it. But looking back I've been working on

• SMSQ/E
• QPC2
• QL-SD hardware
• QL-SD driver
• QL-SD ROM hardware
• QL-VGA hardware
• QL for MiSTer core
• Minerva
• GoldCard ROM
• QLiberator
• QMON
• Toolkit II
• EasyPtr
• QPac2
• QMenu
• QMac
• QMake
• C68
• DISA
• QMovie
• QSound
• ... and certainly some more I forgot

Each single one of those takes many hours and evenings, so that's a lot for one person. And for some of these you might even ask "huh, I didn't know you did something there" which is because I haven't even released everything, as releasing means spending even more time!

In one case this is even deliberate: I've spent some 50-100 hours, almost every evening for some weeks, disassembling the QLiberator runtime. Still not 100% done, but very large parts have been reversed. It's like a puzzle with 1,000,000 pieces and I badly wanted to solve it. But after spending so much time something clicked in me and I just couldn't bring myself to give the result away (again!). I can't sell it obviously and I don't have any better idea, so for now it's just like it is. I'm not sure if this is understandable. I did answer all questions that were posed to me about the inner workings at least, to help improve the fabulous decompiler for example. Some kind of crowd sourcing would be great in this regard, though I'm not even sure how many people are interested in this.

Regarding TCP/IP I did a lot of work on the QPC2 stack (yet to be released...), helped implement the SMSQmulator stack and almost started porting a C based stack to the QL but fortunately stopped myself in time. The last thing I need right now is another project

Cheers, Marcel

Hi Marcel, good news about the new version of the QL-SD driver.

I have had several random memory corruption problems when I was massively loading various programs from QL-SD. I thought it was a memory problem with my SuperGoldCard, but I'm still not sure. I will try this version of the driver to see if I can reproduce the problem.

Three questions:

- Does the new driver enhancement only affect Minerva?

- If I load SMSQ/e and 1.09 driver from the floppy disk, will it completely overwrite the rom driver? How do I know that I am reallyrunning version 1.09 and not 1.07 rom version? (I see that CueShell repeats WIN devices, that means the new driver is running?).

- Is there a way to load the 1.09 driver version from the SD card itself without using a boot floppy?

mk79 wrote:Downloads for the impatient are here https://www.kilgus.net/ql/ql-sd/

Yes, I'm the impatient type.

afx wrote:- Does the new driver enhancement only affect Minerva?

The bug only affects Minerva as far as I know. Certainly not SMSQ/E.

- If I load SMSQ/e and 1.09 driver from the floppy disk, will it completely overwrite the rom driver?

Last loaded driver should win, yes.

How do I know that I am reallyrunning version 1.09 and not 1.07 rom version? (I see that CueShell repeats WIN devices, that means the new driver is running?).

qlsd_api_demo on my page includes an exe that when called with should output the version number.

- Is there a way to load the 1.09 driver version from the SD card itself without using a boot floppy?

Just load the driver in the boot file on your SD card?

Marcel

Marcel, thank you very much for the answers. Doubts solved.

With driver version 1.09, my system crashes on a Minerva system seem to have disappeared. Everything is much more stable now.

Good to know, thanks for the feedback.

How can I update my old QL-SD card driver v0.07.078?
I'm also ready to send it to a profi technician and pay for the duty ... Thx.

Old QL-SD were often supplied with the driver in an OTP chip that cannot be programmed again. So you'd probably need a new EPROM or EEPROM chip and a programmer. Updating the logic chip to v2 is not strictly necessary if it worked for you before but advisable, this needs another specialized programmer though.
Normally I don't do this anymore, but seeing that you are also located in Germany I could make an exception. Contact me if you want.