QL-SD

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Which QL-SD variant would you prefer

QL-SD ROM with one big SD sockets
17
31%
QL-SD ROM with two microSD sockets
24
44%
Internal QL-SD with microSD board
4
7%
Internal QL-SD with single SD board
10
18%
 
Total votes: 55

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Chr$
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Re: QL-SD

Post by Chr$ »

mk79 wrote:50€ means 40€ without VAT. Assuming the one doing the shipping is satisfied with only 10€, that leaves me with 30€. Let‘s say I can produce it for 15€ total (the central chip alone costs 5-8€), that leaves me with 15€. Minus the income tax I‘m at maybe 8€ „profit“ (note that none of my work is paid at this point). That works out ok if we can sell 1000 or more of them.
It‘s utterly unprofitable any way you look at it and I simply cannot charge the 200€ that realistically it should cost. So 75€ or so is still a rather low compromise.
I know MK but perhaps you really should go for 1000. I do think they'd sell better for around 50 Euros and also that they should be in some way shape or form BBQL compatible/useful, but I suppose that's out of the question as a BBQL needs at least increased RAM.... I know that 75 is an excellent price and I'd even be happy to pay more because I know how much you put into all of your projects. How about drumming up some financial backers for them, so that the initial outlay wouldn't hurt your own pocket too much? I wonder if there may be others in the QL community that would invest in you, I mean there should be given your track record.


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mk79
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Re: QL-SD

Post by mk79 »

Chr$ wrote:I know MK but perhaps you really should go for 1000. I do think they'd sell better for around 50 Euros
"We lose on every sale, but we make it up in volume". Quite frankly, even at the current prices lack of interest or potential customers is not a problem I have with QL-SD, especially as people already spend ridiculous prices on the QL hardware itself. The problem I have is that I don't have the stock to fulfill the orders at the moment. Just last week somebody wanted to order 3 at once, for example.
and also that they should be in some way shape or form BBQL compatible/useful, but I suppose that's out of the question as a BBQL needs at least increased RAM....
If you use very small container files of only a few MB that would work fine I guess. But a 128kb QL is just generally not too useful, people who want to subject themselves to that might be better off with a vDrive. It's cheaper, too ;)
How about drumming up some financial backers for them, so that the initial outlay wouldn't hurt your own pocket too much? I wonder if there may be others in the QL community that would invest in you, I mean there should be given your track record.
Thanks, but I haven't even touched the earnings of the last QL-SD batch except for purchasing more electronics equipment, like a pretty wicked soldering iron and stuff. So financing a new batch is not really the problem, time is.


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bwinkel67
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Re: QL-SD

Post by bwinkel67 »

bixio60 wrote: quite interesting the possibility to use of WIFI SD, I suppose the use of them is possible only on emulators? or someway can be used between Q68<->Q60?
Can you please better explain how to use them in QL environment?
I hadn't seen these before.

https://www.toshiba-memory.com/products ... hair-w-04/

This is going to cause me to change my vote to a single full-SD card as it allows you to have your QL connected wirelessly to a PC.

As for connecting your QL to WiFi there are serial boards that exist that allow you to do that and it will work on an unexpanded QL. I specifically bought RetroWifi which attaches via serial port though I'm not sure how restrictive the interface is as I've seen more flexible demos on the internet that allow you to grab packets so you can write your own software. RetroWiFi lets you connect via telnet to some IP based bulletin boards.


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tofro
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Re: QL-SD

Post by tofro »

bwinkel67 wrote:
bixio60 wrote: quite interesting the possibility to use of WIFI SD, I suppose the use of them is possible only on emulators? or someway can be used between Q68<->Q60?
Can you please better explain how to use them in QL environment?
I hadn't seen these before.

https://www.toshiba-memory.com/products ... hair-w-04/

This is going to cause me to change my vote to a single full-SD card as it allows you to have your QL connected wirelessly to a PC.
Well, "allows" is a relative term. There's still quite a bit of work to do until you have a proper network connection. At the moment, this is WIP: I can connect from the QL to a Raspberry Pi that can route the connection further into the network (after all, the FlashAir is definitively not a network card, but rather a tiny web server on an SD card, that can be contacted from the (in this case QL) host via SD-IO with a very limited protocol. But I have some experimental stuff working that looks promising.

Tobias


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Re: QL-SD

Post by stephen_usher »

bwinkel67 wrote:This is going to cause me to change my vote to a single full-SD card as it allows you to have your QL connected wirelessly to a PC.
You don't *HAVE* to have a large SD card connector to do this. Merely use and extension cable, which may give you better WiFi signal anyway:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extension-LANM ... 6988397008


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bwinkel67
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Re: QL-SD

Post by bwinkel67 »

tofro wrote:Well, "allows" is a relative term. There's still quite a bit of work to do until you have a proper network connection. At the moment, this is WIP: I can connect from the QL to a Raspberry Pi that can route the connection further into the network (after all, the FlashAir is definitively not a network card, but rather a tiny web server on an SD card, that can be contacted from the (in this case QL) host via SD-IO with a very limited protocol. But I have some experimental stuff working that looks promising.
Yes, I expected that FlashAir would allow you to change data within a SD card while it is still connected to the QL and so you could add information from a PC and then use the SD commands (vDrive gives you some simple bank switching) to get to that data. You're not going to be streaming information or browsing web sites throught your QL but you transfer information between QL and PC much more seamlessly.


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mk79
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QL-SD

Post by mk79 »

bwinkel67 wrote:You're not going to be streaming information or browsing web sites throught your QL but you transfer information between QL and PC much more seamlessly.
QL-SD uses the exact same container format as most PC emulators, this already makes transferring data between PC and QL easier than it has ever been.


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tofro
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Re: QL-SD

Post by tofro »

Well, if you only want to transfer files (rather: QXL Win containers) between the PC and the FlashAir, it's as easy as can be: Simply connect to the SD-Card's Web server, drop a QXL.WIN file there and mount it on the QL-SD.

What I'm referring to, is a bit more: Accessing the WiFi network from the QL end. That's what I'm working on.


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mk79
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Re: QL-SD

Post by mk79 »

tofro wrote:Well, if you only want to transfer files (rather: QXL Win containers) between the PC and the FlashAir, it's as easy as can be: Simply connect to the SD-Card's Web server, drop a QXL.WIN file there and mount it on the QL-SD.
Sure, but that will eventually run into problems with the „file must be continuous on disc“ restriction.
What I'm referring to, is a bit more: Accessing the WiFi network from the QL end. That's what I'm working on.
Yes, I understood that. Cool hacking value but I‘m not sold yet on the practicality of it all ;)


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bwinkel67
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Re: QL-SD

Post by bwinkel67 »

mk79 wrote:QL-SD uses the exact same container format as most PC emulators, this already makes transferring data between PC and QL easier than it has ever been.
Yup, I already do this quite regularly with MDV images and find it very handy. But doing it wirelessly makes it even more seamless, that's all :D
tofro wrote:Well, if you only want to transfer files (rather: QXL Win containers) between the PC and the FlashAir, it's as easy as can be: Simply connect to the SD-Card's Web server, drop a QXL.WIN file there and mount it on the QL-SD.
I was wondering about how that actually worked. Reading more into FlashAir and its clones, I keep finding "image and video file transfer only" and am curious if some can't do other data files (like WIN and MDV, for instance). It seems many give you a web interface via an IP address so is it the case that you have to get the right SD WiFi card to have this work? I searched YouTube for any retro'er that has done this sort of thing on the Commodore 64 (I don't own one but it seems that these machines tend to have more YouTube channels dedicated to it so if it's been done before it's a good bet on that platform) and have found none. I can only find videos for cameras and the fact that these have been around for 5+ years makes me wonder how useful they actually are. But, it seems you have played with them, correct?

One YouTuber used the Transcend card and did say it could do general files on top of image and video, but Amazon was selling one of those for $250 which seems ridiculous. I also saw (maybe on that same video) that these cards run Linux...is that true? Have you dissected these a bit more? Using them to create a more robust QL network interface (that doesn't go through serial) would be great. I was going to investigate the board that RetroWiFi uses to see if you could use its capabilities to do more than just telnet to pre-existing websites. I believe I'd have to perhaps grab a different one that gives you a more expanded AT Hayes command sent and then construct the RS232 interface.

Note that I don't want to hijack this thread with discussion in SD WiFi cards so if we want to get more deeply into it maybe a new topic ought to be created. However, I do think it is somewhat pertinent to what Marcel was asking since, if it is viable to use on the QL it perhaps changes other's minds on the format of the SD-ROM card as it did mine since, for now, only the larger SD card sizes support it. As another side node, I was looking just for a generic SD to micro-SD card socket that supported WiFi and could just plug in any old micro-SD for the storage part, but found none. That would be extremely useful (though it still would require the normal SD card size and thus still not change my SD-ROM vote :o

Addendum....and I just found this. Doesn't have an on/off switch though:

https://www.192pc.com/product/original- ... apter-set/


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