Alien Laser when copying
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- Brittle Membrane
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Alien Laser when copying
Anyone know what it means when you copy a cart that all of a sudden it sounds like aliens are shooting me
Any ideas?
Thanks
Bill
Any ideas?
Thanks
Bill
- vanpeebles
- Commissario Pebbli
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Re: Alien Laser when copying
Assuming you mean zaps etc from the QL speaker (as opposed to weird mechanical noises from a jammed cartridge etc) it can mean a corrupt cartridge. Some systems choose to give asynchronous zaps from the speaker to indicate a write failure. My Super Gold Card sometimes does this when copying floppy disks and the copying fails. Although as I never use mdv's these days I don't know if the same applies.retro_collector wrote:Anyone know what it means when you copy a cart that all of a sudden it sounds like aliens are shooting me
Any ideas?
Thanks
Bill
Essentially an audible "bad or changed medium" error.
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All things QL - https://dilwyn.qlforum.co.uk/index.html
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Re: Alien Laser when copying
Not quite - after that audible warning, the system will retry - If it doesn't come back with a real "bad or changed medium" then, the retry succeeded and the audible warning can be understood as a thorough reminder to create a back-up.dilwyn wrote: Essentially an audible "bad or changed medium" error.
And yes, I think I do remember this feature that came with newer Miracle cards and ROMs extends to microdrives.
Tobias
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- Brittle Membrane
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Re: Alien Laser when copying
Backup - quite.tofro wrote:Not quite - after that audible warning, the system will retry - If it doesn't come back with a real "bad or changed medium" then, the retry succeeded and the audible warning can be understood as a thorough reminder to create a back-up.dilwyn wrote: Essentially an audible "bad or changed medium" error.
Tobias
Don't think I''ve ever, ever had a disk survive the "Alien Laser".
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- mk79
- QL Wafer Drive
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Alien Laser when copying
This is a feature of the Level 2/3 disc drivers. Unlike earlier drivers these do writes asynchronously because that is much faster. But then this also means that the call that ordered the write has already returned, so the driver cannot return an error retroactively! On Windows you would get an error message box at this point, but the QDOS driver cannot easily do this so it just throws its hands in the air and emits this nasty sound.
Very often it just means that the medium was write protected by the way.
Very often it just means that the medium was write protected by the way.
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- Brittle Membrane
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Re: Alien Laser when copying
Thanks Marcel. Hadn't thought of write protected media.mk79 wrote:This is a feature of the Level 2/3 disc drivers. Unlike earlier drivers these do writes asynchronously because that is much faster. But then this also means that the call that ordered the write has already returned, so the driver cannot return an error retroactively! On Windows you would get an error message box at this point, but the QDOS driver cannot easily do this so it just throws its hands in the air and emits this nasty sound.
Very often it just means that the medium was write protected by the way.
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- NormanDunbar
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Re: Alien Laser when copying
Hey Bill, MK79 is Marcel Kilgus - our resident genius. And he's young too. God I hate him!retro_collector wrote:Thanks MK79
Cheers,
Norm.
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Author of Arduino Software Internals
Author of Arduino Interrupts
No longer on Twitter, find me on https://mastodon.scot/@NormanDunbar.