The Sinclair QL Forum

Jeff_HxC2001 wrote: Otherwise there is a library (libhxcfe) providing FDC / bios like functions to directly access the disk images sectors. With this, this shouldn't to be hard to add file image support to these softwares.

Hi Jeff, funny you should say that, I was just looking at the libhxcfe API

I might try and meld qltools to libhxcfe this week.

G

XorA wrote:

Jeff_HxC2001 wrote: Otherwise there is a library (libhxcfe) providing FDC / bios like functions to directly access the disk images sectors. With this, this shouldn't to be hard to add file image support to these softwares.

Hi Jeff, funny you should say that, I was just looking at the libhxcfe API

I might try and meld qltools to libhxcfe this week.

G

Nice ! If you have some question and/or want some examples, just drop me an email !

Jeff_HxC2001 wrote:What is your company ?

Sandy Electronics.

Dave wrote:

Jeff_HxC2001 wrote:What is your company ?

Sandy Electronics.

Well, i have just saw your others messages on this forum about the hxc price. It seems that you are looking for a cheapo floppy emulator and for sure we cannot offer you something at the expected price.

My advice : Since the QL machine use some very compatible formats (9*80*2*512 & 18*80*2*512), you should try to get one of these chinese floppy emulator, i bet that it work out-the-box on the QL :

One example but you can found some other at a better price:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/US-3-5-USB-SSD- ... 46146cb4de

Jeff your API is nice and easy, after a couple of hours hacking (mostling issues with old 32bit assumptions on 64bit machine in qltools).

XorA wrote:Jeff your API is nice and easy, after a couple of hours hacking (mostling issues with old 32bit assumptions on 64bit machine in qltools).

Code: Select all

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/graeme/Work/hxcfloppyemu-code/HxCFloppyEmulator/build/ ./qltools qlboot_img.hfe -d
qlboot    
1116/1440 sectors.

boot                                       74 29/11/101 11:32:15 v1    
ipcextuk_bin                             5558 22/02/114 23:02:02 v1    
kbdgen_bas                              28747 22/02/114 23:02:05 v1    
kbd_UK_bas                               7428 22/02/114 23:02:06 v1    
IPCEXTUK_ROM                             5600 22/02/114 23:02:06 v1    
unzip                               E  111158 22/02/114 23:13:55 v1     (51810)

whoo, that was fast ! Very nice !

And here goes for source :-

https://github.com/slimlogic/qltools

also attached as .zip to this post, zip contains an amd64 linux executable, all you need is your libhxcfe.so from HxC tools build.

Have given this very basic testing so I cannot promise it won't eat your firstborn.

G

Jeff_HxC2001 wrote:Well, i have just saw your others messages on this forum about the hxc price. It seems that you are looking for a cheapo floppy emulator and for sure we cannot offer you something at the expected price.

My advice : Since the QL machine use some very compatible formats (9*80*2*512 & 18*80*2*512), you should try to get one of these chinese floppy emulator, i bet that it work out-the-box on the QL

I wrote a whole long speech about how business works, about how a distributor doesn't pay retail, etc, and then deleted it.

I'm not interested in selling a competing product. I'm interested in selling and supporting the HxC. I'm just not prepared to pay retail price to be a distributor, which is what I am being asked to do.

Dave wrote:

Jeff_HxC2001 wrote:I'm just not prepared to pay retail price to be a distributor, which is what I am being asked to do.

Many years ago I was in the electronics retail trade, and back then the markup from trade to retail was 60%. Over the years I would hazard a guess and say this has gotten less and less and less..........but to NOT get a discount as a distributor is just pure greed by the manufacturer.............tell them to shove it!

Ian.

Ok some more updates in the github.

Also updated the ql_loader for libhxfe and added writing support so we can go both ways .img->hfe and hfe->.img.

http://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopi ... 9660#p9660

I do not have access to a windows build system to make binaries for all you windows guys.