The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi all,

I recently picked up a box of 25 microdrive cartridges with the intention of refelting them for use with my Spectrum. I notice that they have been used on a QL and 7 of them were commercially available software. Before I go ahead and refelt / reformat, I wanted to check whether there would be any interest in them? This isn't a sales post. I don't have a QL and don't really know what these cartridges are. I don't want to destroy anything that might be of interest to others, or are these the QL equivalent of Make a Chip? Here are some photos. The last 2 are GRAPHIQL demos and GRAPHIQL master.

Thanks for your help,

Nick.

Hi Nick,

There is no Make A Chip programme for the QL. But I have s little job in progress to disassemble the Spectrum version, with a view to porting it to the QL.

I would be interested in the HiSoft cartridges: DevPac and MonQL.

Thanks for your reply Derek. Is it appropriate to ask for an idea of a reasonable price on here? I have no idea whether they are working copies. If we're only talking a few pound then I'd be happy to swap them for a few refelted cartridges.

I'll take the ones that Derek doesn't want then. I have plenty of refelted carts (and peices of felt) to swap with you.

I don't think any of those are spectacularly valuable, few quid is about right. (they'd probably be more with the original boxes/packaging etc).

Thanks for your reply Chris. Does 2 refelted cartridges for each cartridge I send sound reasonable? If so that would be 10 from you (in exchange for Metacomco assembler, HiSoft MonQL, Computer ONE Pascal, GRAPHIQL demos and GRAPHIQL master) and 4 from Derek (in exchange for HiSoft DevPac and MonQL). If you want to send me your addresses seperately I'll post them this coming week. Thanks for your input, much appreciated. Any spare bits of felt would be much appreciated also.

Nick Parsons wrote:Thanks for your reply Chris. Does 2 refelted cartridges for each cartridge I send sound reasonable? If so that would be 10 from you (in exchange for Metacomco assembler, HiSoft MonQL, Computer ONE Pascal, GRAPHIQL demos and GRAPHIQL master) and 4 from Derek (in exchange for HiSoft DevPac and MonQL). If you want to send me your addresses seperately I'll post them this coming week. Thanks for your input, much appreciated. Any spare bits of felt would be much appreciated also.

Yes, ok. The NOS re-felted carts that I have don't have their write-protect tab present though, just so you know. They were written to once and never sold. Great quality though and I always check them and discard any that behave unreliably.

I'll send you 4 from Derek as I have plenty at the moment. Will include some pads too.

Not sure if you are able to PM yet?

PM sent to you and Derek. All cartridges now taken, thanks.

Of the 5 I got, just out of interest, here are the results of dumping the contents (after they had been refelted):

Computer One Pascal - No errors.
HiSoft MON QL - No errors.
Metacomco QL Assembler Development Kit - corrupt file: asm (loads ok, not yet sure yet how critical that file is).
GraphiQL Demos - corrupt files: West, Zkul (which are intro screens from those games so not really critical).
GraphiQL Master - corrupt file: Graphiql (the main 'exe' file I think, but it does seem to load).

Hi Chr$,

The 2 microdrive carts I was sent, MonQL and DevPac, do copy OK, but will only work on JM rom QLs, any more like JS or Minerva the software does not really work.

Maybe a candidate for disassembley to correct the problems.