The Sinclair QL Forum

Specifically the Q68 has enough on-board support to create SD cards (and QXL.WIN containers) on its own. Obviously, some preparation to make SMSQ/E boot has to be done before, but
seems to be doing what you're looking for.

Sorry for the late reply. I went off to see if it would sink in.

Initially I thought a container was going to be a folder, but thanks to the SMSQ/E for Q68 manual I got a better understanding. That was that I could use a command on the Q68 to create a new container or use a "surrogate" file by formatting it.
Am presuming such a file has to be a QL file of some sort?

There was some caution mentioned on deleting files within a container, I'd be wanting to create and delete multiple files on Quill as an example?


The easiest solution seems to maybe copy an existing container, such as THe Library or QPCdemo and just format that to create a new empty container?

Wicksy wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2024 3:36 pm There was some caution mentioned on deleting files within a container, I'd be wanting to create and delete multiple files on Quill as an example?

I think you will find that they mean. Don't delete the QXL.WIN files on the SD card, and then put another one on the SD card.
The Q68 expects the QXL.WIN container files to not be fragmented on the SD card.
It's alright to add new QXL.WIN containers to a SD card. But if you remove one, you should empty the SD card, re-format it, then copy the QXL.WIN container files back on, one at a time.

Once the container file is mounted in the Q68. You can add and delete however many files you like from within SMSQ/E. You are only changing the contents of the container file. Not the space it uses on the SD card.

Thanks Martin.

Can I use a pc file to format in to a container, not just a native QL file?

Wicksy wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2024 4:31 am Thanks Martin.

Can I use a pc file to format in to a container, not just a native QL file?

I'm not too sure what your asking here. I don't know of a Windows, or Linux program that can create create QXL.WIN files directly.

If I want a QXL.WIN file, I use QPC2 to create it. Go into the QPC drives configuration, and select the required WIN drive Enter the name of the QXL.WIN container name to create Start QPC2 Type the commands as shown to create a 50M byte container

A QXL.WIN file will be created that you can copy to an SD card for the Q68

It would make sense then to make the full amount of 8 win drives (if 8 is correct). Then I will have no more need for QPC2, and just keep Qemulator for pc use.

I believe I can transfer flp and mdv images to the container, then use your MDI and FDI to convert for a Q68 to use? Or must I do that prior, say on an emulator?

Do QLpak files work on Q68 or do they need the "boot" part removing? I have a few that I bought that I'd like to use on both pc and Q68.

Can zip files go on the container to be unzipped on the Q68 later?

Regarding making an existing file in to a container file -

From the Q68 SMSQE manual on page 8:
"2.3
Formatting a drive.
“Formatting a drive” means that an ALREADY EXISTING file on a card is made into a container file. This is achieved with the usual FORMAT command:
FORMAT winX_name
where, as usual, X is the drive number and name the formatted name of the drive. This may be up to 10 characters long. Anything longer will be truncated to 10 letters. Please note that this is NOT the name of the container file on the card, just the name that will be displayed when doing a DIR on the drive.
Formatting a drive will irretrievably erase the content of the file on the card and make it into a container file. Thus, the size of the container file (and so the size of the WIN drive) will be that of the file that already exists."

My query was, is the file to be converted by the FORMAT command have to be a QL native file or will it work on a PC Windows file to make the QXLwin container "shell" file. It doesn't stipulate that you can't just use any, so I just take it at face value that it can.

Wicksy wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2024 8:56 am It would make sense then to make the full amount of 8 win drives (if 8 is correct). Then I will have no more need for QPC2, and just keep Qemulator for pc use.

In theory you can have 16 QXL.WIN container files on a Q68 SD card. But only 8 of them available at any one time. You would have to swap them about with a WIN_DRIVE command in the Q68.
If you have a particular WIN drive size that you want to use, say 40M bytes. Just create one empty 40M byte QXL.win file, and make copies of it. Then reformat/rename it.
I say in theory, (as in at least my case) when the SD card in put into a Windows system. Windows uses up 3 of the available 16 directory slots.

I believe I can transfer flp and mdv images to the container, then use your MDI and FDI to convert for a Q68 to use? Or must I do that prior, say on an emulator?

What the MDI and FDI drivers do, is to allow you to access microdrive and floppy disk image files. So if you copy a floppy disk image onto a QXL.WIN container (say WIN1_) then you can mount the floppy image into the system as FDI1_
Essentially what you end up with is a floppy image container file, in a QXL.WIN container file, on an SD card.

You could also store the MDI/FDI image files in FAT drives on the Q68 SD card. (Which brings up another problem I have with Windows and the Q68. None of my Windows PC's can see the FAT drives on SD cards. I have to use Linux to be able to access them)

Do QLpak files work on Q68 or do they need the "boot" part removing? I have a few that I bought that I'd like to use on both pc and Q68.

I think QLPAK files are a Qemulator only thing. I've not had much to do with them. But I suspect that you could extract the files from them.

Can zip files go on the container to be unzipped on the Q68 later?

Yes. Of course you would need an unzip program to be on the Q68

Wicksy wrote: Tue Jul 23, 2024 9:18 am Regarding making an existing file in to a container file -

From the Q68 SMSQE manual on page 8:
"2.3
Formatting a drive.
“Formatting a drive” means that an ALREADY EXISTING file on a card is made into a container file. This is achieved with the usual FORMAT command:
FORMAT winX_name
where, as usual, X is the drive number and name the formatted name of the drive. This may be up to 10 characters long. Anything longer will be truncated to 10 letters. Please note that this is NOT the name of the container file on the card, just the name that will be displayed when doing a DIR on the drive.
Formatting a drive will irretrievably erase the content of the file on the card and make it into a container file. Thus, the size of the container file (and so the size of the WIN drive) will be that of the file that already exists."

My query was, is the file to be converted by the FORMAT command have to be a QL native file or will it work on a PC Windows file to make the QXLwin container "shell" file. It doesn't stipulate that you can't just use any, so I just take it at face value that it can.

I don't know if you copied say a Microsoft word file to the SD card, then tried to FORMAT it. You would get a QXL.WIN file of the size of the word file.
But the contents of the word file would definitely get lost. The same would be true for a QL native file.

[/quote]
I don't know if you copied say a Microsoft word file to the SD card, then tried to FORMAT it. You would get a QXL.WIN file of the size of the word file.
But the contents of the word file would definitely get lost. The same would be true for a QL native file.
[/quote]

That wouldn't bother me Martin as it would be a copy of the original. It just seemed the easier option before I get a '68 and negating the need to learn QPC2 - as it is, I've to learn QL commands, Qemulator, what I need to get around Q68 and I have no experience with using utilities, which is a big thing on QL's.