The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi varmfskii,

I was just on the way to propose to use QLWA.WIN files from QIMSI section of the homepage of Dilwyn. We put all required files there.

SMSQ/E file is only required for QIMSI Gold not for Standard QIMSI. So this is not relevant for you.

Happy to hear that everything is working well now.

Best regards,

Stephan

Maskenlos wrote: Sun Jul 07, 2024 1:13 pm Hi,

very strange. Dilwyn explained in detail what to do after booting from floppy. I have no idea why it is not working with the SGC clone.
You may try "dir mdv1_" after booting from floppy. This may show the directory from win1_ as below:

3. If the QL has a floppy disk drive and you boot from a floppy disc for any reason, the magic of the startup sequences leaves the WIN device of the QIMSI named as MDV. It's a side-effect of the way interfaces boot up by changing their names as they boot up. I only found out because I left a floppy with a BOOT program on it in the drive overnight by mistake. After the floppy BOOT program ran, the device called WIN didn't exist - DIR WIN1_ failed. DIR MDV1_ gave a listing of the SD-card! So I had to use a WIN_USE "win" command to manually change the SD-card device name from MDV to WIN if the QL had booted from floppy disk on the Gold Card.

Stephan

I hope that's helped anyone who runs into that issue. Although it didn't take long to figure out what was happening, it did have me quite worried before I learned what was causing it.

Hi,

very strange. Dilwyn explained in detail what to do after booting from floppy. I have no idea why it is not working with the SGC clone.
You may try "dir mdv1_" after booting from floppy. This may show the directory from win1_ as below:

3. If the QL has a floppy disk drive and you boot from a floppy disc for any reason, the magic of the startup sequences leaves the WIN device of the QIMSI named as MDV. It's a side-effect of the way interfaces boot up by changing their names as they boot up. I only found out because I left a floppy with a BOOT program on it in the drive overnight by mistake. After the floppy BOOT program ran, the device called WIN didn't exist - DIR WIN1_ failed. DIR MDV1_ gave a listing of the SD-card! So I had to use a WIN_USE "win" command to manually change the SD-card device name from MDV to WIN if the QL had booted from floppy disk on the Gold Card.

Stephan

For your first problem:

try "win_ use win" after booting from FLP.

USB K/Bs will not work, must be PS/2 or combo K/B. Also try different adapters, some fail to work.

SinclairSociety wrote: Wed Nov 22, 2023 6:25 pm One of the issues I ran into with my vDrive, set as external so I think #3 and not #1 that some software written needs it to be to run from #1, is was mostly miss for software that ran. I would get errors etc...

I know there was some device I could install in my QL to make that vDrive #1 but never purchased one and was not ready to open my QL as of yet.

Tell me, will this similar issue of software written to run on Microcarts and run from #1 drive, will it have the same issue running on QIMSI?

I don't have enough knowledge yet on mass media and software for QL so figured I would ask.

TJ

Yes, in a similar way, as the drive will be win1_file_name as opposed to mdv1_file_name. However, once you have Toolkit II installed you can use the WIN_USE command to redirect access to mdv1_ to actually look at win1_ instead. However, most programs just have a SuperBASIC loader which you can merely edit and change the drive reference. This is just the same as if you want to run programs from floppy (FLP_USE).

Unfortunately doesn't work with copy protection.

Quick update on my situation regarding getting a PS/2 mouse to work with QIMSI.

A new mouse and PS/2 adaptor has arrived now and the situation is much better, thanks to a lot of help from Peter (thank you Peter).

I can list the following mice as working with QIMSI. The mice with PS/2 plugs will need a PS/2 female to USB male adaptor to connect to the OTG USB lead for the QIMSI of course.

Cherry M5400 (part no. M540001), USB plug, grey coloured, optical mouse
Mitsumi ECMS 67002, PS2 plug, beige coloured, optical mouse
Acer MS11.200.080, PS2 plug, black, optical mouse
Fujitsu M-S48, PS2 plug, beige coloured ball mouse

One mouse with PS/2 plug I still haven't managed to get to work:

Fachi Electrical Scroller Ball 99-P, ps/2 plug, black ball mouse

I have another 6 or 7 mice here which don't work with either QIMSI or Q68. They all have USB plugs and mostly unbranded, so I'm assuming that none of them are PS/2

A couple of things we have learned, some of which Peter will document in future versions of the manual:

1. If the QL has a QIMI fitted inside, SMSQ/E must be configured to "IGNORE QIMI" for the QIMSI mouse to work. I found that if the QIMI is enabled, even if no mouse connected to it, that all the working mice would not register left or right button presses through QIMSI, although pointer movement would work normally. At best, only about one in five button presses gets through via QIMSI in this scenario. The mouse movement left/right/up/down works normally, so (like me) you might think you have configured "IGNORE QIMI" and not spot that in fact you did not really save the changes, so QIMSI mouse button presses don't work even though the rest of the mouse does.
Anyone know if QIMI can be disabled in QDOS? (probably easier to just remove the internal QIMI, or just leave QIMSI mouse unconnected and use the QIMI mouse if you HAVE to use QIMSI on a QL with QIMI).

2. Not all PS/2 to USB adaptors are the same! Only passive ones work. I have three here now. Two are known to work, the other doesn't (it's a lot fatter than the other two, so might not be passive).

3. If the QL has a floppy disk drive and you boot from a floppy disc for any reason, the magic of the startup sequences leaves the WIN device of the QIMSI named as MDV. It's a side-effect of the way interfaces boot up by changing their names as they boot up. I only found out because I left a floppy with a BOOT program on it in the drive overnight by mistake. After the floppy BOOT program ran, the device called WIN didn't exist - DIR WIN1_ failed. DIR MDV1_ gave a listing of the SD-card! So I had to use a WIN_USE "win" command to manually change the SD-card device name from MDV to WIN if the QL had booted from floppy disk on the Gold Card.

4. The version of SMSQ/E 3.39 supplied doesn't have a QIMSI mouse driver in it - need to load MOUSE_bin in both QDOS and SMSQ/E in the version that came with my QIMSI.

I've tried the QIMSI on my Aurora again since resolving the earlier issues. It seems to work fine as long as everything is set to ignore the Aurora's QIMI and the SuperHermes Lite keyboard driver is loaded first.

Aurora and QIMSI.

Someone asked about this. I tried QIMSI on my Minis-QL Aurora this evening. It works.

As my Aurora card has no QL-Style ROM port connector on the main board (and anyway there might not be room for the QIMSI because of the number of cables in the way even if it had a QL-style ROM port connector), it is replicated on the M-Plane backplane you can see in the first picture. Normally this is occupied by my old RomDisq simply because I had no other use for it these days. I removed the Qubide from the backplane (to avoid WIN name clash). Leaves just the Aurora, SuperHermes Lite, M-Plane, Super Gold Card and floppy disk drive.

The second picture shows the QIMSI plugged in where the RomDisq used to be. You can see the RomDisq resting loose on a cable in the picture, since I was too lazy to free it from its LED cable. Obviously, for the Aurora's PS2 keyboard to work via the SuperHermes, you have to copy the ipcexts file to somewhere where it'll boot from. Seemed to work fine from QIMSI.

So it seems to work fine. The QIMSI is upside down in this particular system so you can't see the LED, and the micro SD card slot is beneath the board making it hard to see to insert a card if you want to change it.

Apart from that inconvenience, all seems to work OK.

Tesla wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 10:01 pm Thanks Pr0f and Peter, for your answers. I was afraid of this .

If you own a Lattice programmer or know someone who does, there might be a solution.
I have developed an alternative QL-SD logic, which allows coexistence with QIMSI per jumper option.

viewtopic.php?t=4540

In addition to the traditional QL-SD use, one can:

- Use the QL-SD hardware just as Minerva ROM adaptor and QIMSI as normal
- Let QIMSI use the QL-SD card socket instead of it's own socket

I found this quite useful, as I have two QL-SD myself and didn't want to buy additional Minerva ROM adaptors. And while tinkering with the PLD for that purpose, I had the crazy idea to let QIMSI use the card sockets of QL-SD. It's a bit "magic", but it appears to work. This way, it is more convenient to exchange cards than at the back of the QL. Note that QIMSI uses the default container name QLWA.WIN, not QXL.WIN for good reasons explained elsewhere.

Hi,

When the Qubide first appeared, I had 2 Qubides attached to a QL, for BBS storage which does work if the interfaces are located at different addresses and and the device name is different.

I had a Super Gold Card, with Qubide at C0000 device driver name: WDD and the second Qubide at 0C000 in the Rom Port Area, device driver name WIN.

I had initial problems with using the WIN_USE command which got confused with similiar versions of the same commands on each interface, a solution was to patch one of the Qubide ROMs, renaming the WIN device driver and WIN_xxx commands. Which sort worked but a little messy, as most people do not have facilities to programme EPROMs, well in 1990s, that is.

Fast forward to, today, Qubide at another memory address other than the Rom Port at 0C000, would allow the interface to work, but the there would be a device driver name clash.

The WIN_USE command exists on each interface, and the interface last initialised would have the previous interfaces WIN commands overwritten, so the only way would be to patch the rom changing the WIN_xxx commands.

Just shows, 25 years on, nothing has changed.

Foot Note: I moved to a Q40 for the BBS and transferred all the data by SerNET to a Q40 hard drive.

Pr0f wrote: Tue Oct 10, 2023 12:23 pm [...] but I believe the SD format is the same for both, so you should be able to read the SD cards (assuming you are using the small ones) from one in the other and vice versa...

Yes, but it might be required to use the WIN_DRIVE command, described in the manual.

QIMSI does not use the container name "QXL.WIN" by default, because that name was originally established for emulators which support fragmented container files.
QIMSI does not allow fragmented container files, and special care must be taken, according to the manual.
To create some attention for this important restriction, QIMSI uses the default container name "QLWA.WIN". This name was originally established for the Q68, also requiring non-fragmented containers.