The Sinclair QL Forum

Image File Utilities is a group of SuperBASIC extensions for handling microdrive and floppy disk image files.

It can create microdrive images in Qlay, Qemulator and MDI file formats. And also convert existing microdrive image files between the three microdrive file formats.

It is still a work in progress, and this is a Beta release.
I am seeking feedback on any problems found in use, and any features you might like to see added.

I'm curious to know why one would need a blank FLP image file. Why not just use a QXL.win file? Are these microdrive and floppy formats particular to just Qemulator and Qlay? I've used floppy image files, but these are direct copies of a floppy using 'dd'.

Tim

swensont wrote:I'm curious to know why one would need a blank FLP image file. Why not just use a QXL.win file? Are these microdrive and floppy formats particular to just Qemulator and Qlay? I've used floppy image files, but these are direct copies of a floppy using 'dd'.

Tim

Maybe for the HxC floppy drive emulators etc. They need a blank file to work with as they can't create their own.

swensont wrote:I'm curious to know why one would need a blank FLP image file. Why not just use a QXL.win file? Are these microdrive and floppy formats particular to just Qemulator and Qlay? I've used floppy image files, but these are direct copies of a floppy using 'dd'.

Tim

The FLP images are essentially the same as using 'dd' (I assume that is a Linux command for converting a real floppy disk to a image file). You could convert them back to real floppy disks if you want to.

I don't know if any other QL emulators support the microdrive image formats.

These routines are basically the the same as the routines in my MDI and FDI device drivers (although the CONVERT2_xxx routines have had a major rewrite). I have just pulled them out so that if you want to play with image files, you don't have to install either of the device drivers first.