The Sinclair QL Forum

All right, my last #QLvember entry... in December This one is about microdrives in the QL and a microdrive repair.
https://youtu.be/0mIyDafjBRo

I will definitely be having more QL content in the future. I'm having too much fun with this computer to stop now

llopis wrote:All right, my last #QLvember entry... in December This one is about microdrives in the QL and a microdrive repair.
https://youtu.be/0mIyDafjBRo

I will definitely be having more QL content in the future. I'm having too much fun with this computer to stop now

At 17:00 my hand written note with the ULA! Embarrassed a little that you showed that as I can only write BLOCK CAPITALS these days!

And 22:21 my felt pads and some stickers.

Just a little thing though.... Microdrives are the drives. Microdrive cartridges are the things you put in them. I know, I know, even back in the day the removable media were often called Microdrives and it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, especially in such an excellent quality video - love the bit on probing the ULA signals. I already had that Sinclair test program typed up... could have even put it on a cartridge and included it with the other bits. Never mind, it wasn't a massive amount for your helper to type up.

llopis wrote:my last #QLvember entry...

Another excellent and cool video! Thank you so much!

It in my to watch list. Hopefully this evening. Enjoyed the others too.

Cheers,
Norm.

just watched the microdrive repair video, most enjoyable, thanks. Plus, I learned something.


Cheers,
Norm.

llopis wrote:All right, my last #QLvember entry... in December This one is about microdrives in the QL and a microdrive repair.
https://youtu.be/0mIyDafjBRo

I will definitely be having more QL content in the future. I'm having too much fun with this computer to stop now

Great video and so very detailed. I loved the timing part too...it's one of the points that Sinclair Research made in their advertising stating that once it finds the sector the throughput would be faster due to lack of seeks (of course they ignored the reliability issue). I did use micrdrives in the early 90's pretty successfully until I got a disk drive a year later.

I'm so glad you were able to do those three QL videos for #QLvember (give a day or two ). I'm going to be scouring eBay to find an inexpensive (broken down) QL so I can send one to Adrian so that if #QLvember happens again in 2021 (hopefully) maybe he can join in as well. Seeing the quality in videos folks like you bring really is terrific to see. Good luck with #DOScember (I watched the Zoom meeting of all of you), I'll be looking forward to your video on that. I'd join in but don't have anything DOS related. If I had PC Conqueror (Digital Precision's MS-DOS emulator) I'd show that on the QL -- maybe someone on the forum could do a video on that.

Hi all,

A big thank you to all that participated in the inaugural #QLvember on YouTube! I had initially reached out to Noel and he was very supportive of the idea and convinced me not to rush it (#QLtober was the original thought) and have it be in November and so we did. Thanks to TJ and Pete and Urs for also putting some great videos out. We had a small group but it was really fun to see all the content out there. I wanted to do it soon after #SepTandy but the "ember" month's didn't really sound great (though #QLvember has really grown on me). I also thought of #QLly for July but that was too strange plus it conjures up the word "lie" which wasn't good. Also, #FebQLuary was an idea...but the norm in the QL community is to stick QL in front of things and so we did it in November

I got over 600 views (and counting) on one of my videos and a bunch of comments, which is nice to see (though a bit surprising as it was also the least technical of the bunch I put out where I was just showing the QL in action using microdrives like it was mid 80's again). What I really liked was reading all of the comments, especially on Noel's videos. Seeing some folks come out of the woodwork talking about their fond memories of the QL was really nice to see. I had to monitor myself so as not to respond on Noel's video's to every comment that was of interest to me (I did to just one or two). Lots of positive viewpoints of the QL and maybe we'll get a few new members on the forum.

Stay safe everyone!

Mike

It was a great idea!

Again, very professional and cool video. I gave thumps up no 500 (maybe one of 3 thumbs up I ever gave on YouTube ). Good to see some love for the QL, though Microdrives were probably not the thing to love most

bwinkel67 wrote:Great video and so very detailed. I loved the timing part too...it's one of the points that Sinclair Research made in their advertising stating that once it finds the sector the throughput would be faster due to lack of seeks (of course they ignored the reliability issue). I did use micrdrives in the early 90's pretty successfully until I got a disk drive a year later.

Glad you liked it! I was actually told something interesting in the comments: Apparently the ZX Spectrum microdrives had a special mode that would duplicate data on save to minimize load time. I suspect that means that the same data was written in opposite ends of the tape, so that would cut the seek time in half at the expense of reducing the storage space in half. Very smart!

bwinkel67 wrote:I'm so glad you were able to do those three QL videos for #QLvember (give a day or two ). I'm going to be scouring eBay to find an inexpensive (broken down) QL so I can send one to Adrian so that if #QLvember happens again in 2021 (hopefully) maybe he can join in as well. Seeing the quality in videos folks like you bring really is terrific to see. Good luck with #DOScember (I watched the Zoom meeting of all of you), I'll be looking forward to your video on that. I'd join in but don't have anything DOS related. If I had PC Conqueror (Digital Precision's MS-DOS emulator) I'd show that on the QL -- maybe someone on the forum could do a video on that.

Thanks. We should definitely do #QLvember next year again (even though I will definitely release some QL-related videos before then). Thanks for organizing it!