Sinclair QL Storage Solutions

[spkr]

Hi there guys,

Being at risk at posting at he wrong subforum, here goes

Im now to the Sinclair QL, and I am trying to figure out what the essential hardware upgrades are to get the most out of the platform. Other than exploring the software libraries (games ) that are available for the QL, my real main interest is development for the Sinclair QL, since Im a big fan of and contributor to the demoscene.

As such I am looking for a way to get my future code from my cross development machine to the actual hardware. Would a SD cart solution be the preffered way here? Are these normally readily available? I read on another post that a few may become available through sellmyretro in due time, are there other places where hardware expansion are found?

Kind regards,
Wietze

[bwinkel67]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum!

There are presently two SD options. QL-SD is an internal installation and replaces one of the internal microdrives or also comes in a micro-SD model that sticks out of the back of the QL near the video port. It gets installed internally having a socket extension that (I believe) connects to the internal ROM socket. These are the fastest solution and act as WIN (Winchester hard-drive) devices with large storage sizes (I don't own one so I'm doing this for memory). The other option is vDrive which is an external microdrive SD card adapter that emulates the microdrives and will give you up to 6 emulated 128K MDV's (3 through 8) in multiple banks (as many as your SD card can hold). They are slower since they don't require any hardware upgrade and instead fool the QL into thinking they are actual external microdrives (so speed is important to match those of the original external microdrives) but simple as you just plug them into the expansion port on right side of QL and they go. A third option, QL-SD ROM, is in the works that would fit into the ROM slot in the back of the QL and give you SD card access similar to QL-SD. The first and third option do eat a bit into your QL's memory whereas vDrive does not (in case you need full 128K for any demos you write).

To copy to and from SD cards from your PC (i.e. Windows) requires either software QxlwinReader for QL-SD and qltools for vDrive, or you can use an emulator like Q-emulator, QLAY2, or QL2K to created MDV's for vDrive...note tat I use QLAY2 which works pretty well and QL2K is an upgrade on that and works the same way...I don't use Q-emulator so I'm not as clear on how it handles MDVs.

[spkr]

Hi and thanks for the reply!

Do I understand correctly that the microdrive is supported from the get go, and the scars solutions require additional drives to be loaded in order to work. Then it seems the microdrive solution gets pretty close to the actual stock experience. Where would one obtain such vdrive?

I saw some things on sell my retro that seemed to be either ide, card and/or floppy drive devices. And depending on the expansion offering additional memory too Are these requiring additional drivers too?

With regards to running software and games, was it common and standard to have the memory of the al expanded, of was stock the way to go?

Kind regards
Wietze

[tofro]

The choice of storage options should actually be your second choice.

First, you should decide whether you want a memory expansion or not (it's pretty likely you will - a non-memory-expanded QL is actually a nuisance ).

If you decide against a memory expansion, vDrive is the way to go. QL-SD will probably work, but limit the unexpanded QL's already scarce memory even further to render it basically un-usable for more than very basic tasks.

In case you decide to expand the QL's memory (not limiting yourself to the "stock" experience, which requires a bit of a masochistic character), the limited storage space per image on a vDrive might become a nuisance (to "fill" a 896k Trump-Card-expanded QL, you'll need 9 images....), also the size of a single program you can run is limited to the size of an image. It is possible to carefully fiddle together a proper development environment on multiple microdrive images, but it is, well, fiddly.

The good news is: You can actually have both . vDrive and QL-SD work perfectly well together.

With regards to other options: QubIDE or Tetroid's CF card solutions are available from time to time. When looking for these, they basically are alternatives to QL-SD, but offer a memory expansion and (the latter) a floppy disk interface in addition. Note some combinations of these will not work well together (i.e. don't), because they compete for the ROM-slot memory area to store their drivers (all solutions that need an extra driver come with it in ROM)

[mselkin]

Hi,

I thought I might give an answer from a novice perspective. While I had a ZX Spectrum in my youth, I only recently acquired a QL and just went through the same learning curve.
Other users on this forum have far more knowledge and experience so please correct me if anything I say is incorrect.

Multiple external storage options are available:
1) The stock QL comes with it's two built-in microdrives but could accept others (up to a total of 8, connected/chained to the port on the right). Tindie sells vDrive - it's an emulated microdrive (using SD card instead of microdrive cart) but it does more - it emulates multiple drives, so one vDrive is like chaining another 6 external drives.
You can also purchase a vMap from Tindie. It plugs into the ribbon cable of the built in microdrives and allows you to program how the microdrive signals are routed. This is an important concept as many QL programs are hard coded to load/run from a particular drive (usually drive 1). So the vMap lets you shuffle your drives any way you want, for example you can choose to have drive 1 be an emulated drive and drive 3 be a real microdrive.
2) SellMyRetro sells Tetroid cards: Tetroid disc interface provides a memory upgrade, a floppy disc interface to connect external floppy drives and a CF card interface to act as your hard drive. There are other cards too, one for a DOM card and a recreated Micracle Systems Super Gold card that provides memory, real time clock, floppy interface. These all plug into the large QL port on the left.
3) QL-SD (hopefully coming soon) will plug into ROM port on back or in ROM socket and provides SD card socket to act as hard drive.

As mentioned above, the Tetroid cards use the ROM socket memory for the hard drive portion of their firmware, so you lose access to the ROM port.

As a beginner, a machine with vMap, vDrive and Tetroid disc interface card seems like a good start, as I have two working original microdrives, another 6 emulated drives, floppy drives and a CF card to act as a large hard drive.
If you wanted a configuration with the most RAM, I would choose a vMap, vDrive, QL-SD (when it comes) and a Tetroid Super Gold Card, as that would allow the QL-SD to be your hard drive, the Gold card to give you floppy drives and still have original microdrive functionality.

Mark

[spkr]

Thank you all for your responses, slowly it's starting to get clear to me. From the zx spectrum, I have the experience that one can select an image or tape from an overarching menu, which is then loaded directly into ram and executed.

From what you guys are telling me, I'm getting the impression that the solutions available for the ql are actual storage devices and act as such; and providing the actual interfacing rather than writing directly I to memory. As such they (all but bribe) need code resident in memory to access the storage. Multiple devices requiring multiple resident pieces of code could conflict.

The vdrive seems an affordable first step to transfer executables from a modern computer to the ql, and seems to be complementary to my initial idea to write code for the stock machine. So I think I'll start off with that!

I will have some questions regarding cpu cycles, emulators and programming/debugging tooling, but they are (apart from the cpu cycles I guess) best off at another forum.

Thanks so much for the info so far!

[vanpeebles]

I love the idea of seeing more demos on the QL. I think there is a lot of untapped potential there. I'd love to see what the QL could if it had the development run over the years that speccy demos have had.

[spkr]

I love the idea of seeing more demos on the QL. I think there is a lot of untapped potential there. I'd love to see what the QL could if it had the development run over the years that speccy demos have had.

Ditto! So far I am only awarenl of 1 demo by five finger punch.

[vanpeebles]

I love the idea of seeing more demos on the QL. I think there is a lot of untapped potential there. I'd love to see what the QL could if it had the development run over the years that speccy demos have had.

Ditto! So far I am only awarenl of 1 demo by five finger punch.

Also a very short nyan cat one

[mselkin]

Is that(the QL's short run) the reason why the QL games appear to me to be worse than Spectrum games? Don't get me wrong, I love the QL (and the spectrum), I'm referring to simple things I've noticed, like the main character in a game not being animated (in say leg movements) etc. Why is there no game that looks like something from Ultimate? The QL has a more powerful processor. Was it Clive Sinclair's desire to keep it a business platform, or just no economic incentive because of fewer sales?