The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi forum ,


is it possible to update the tkII part in the qdisk interface ??

where is it located , and will any updated version fit inthere ??



please let me know



any help is help.




techy

Which manufacturer is it ? A CST QDisk (there were others !!) ?

The Toolkit II is stored on the only EPROM on the disk interface - normally has a label on it over the UV window.
What version do you have at the moment?

hi rich ,

it is a cst qdisk firmware version 1.19

hardware version 2 ( large cooling fin )




techy

I have several disk EPROMs here, but v1.19 seems to be the last version released by CST.

The EPROM contains the driver code plus Toolkit 2 - you would need to use an EPROM programmer to read the EPROM chip, and then find the start of the Toolkit 2 copy contained on it - you could then overwrite the old Toolkit 2 code with a later version (checking it has not changed in length, so you are overwriting anything else).

You could then re-blow the EPROM with the updated code and plug it into your CST interface

I would guess that the Toolkit 2 code appears at the end of the EPROM dump, but it is anyone's guess really.

The other option is just to load the latest Toolkit 2 from disk, or use it on an EPROM cartridge plugged into the QL ROM Port.

Hi techy, a little contribution from me: I've same floppy interface and I've used a eprom programmer to write a 64k eprom with Minerva+tk2 then I've replaced the original ql's roms with new eprom and all things work fluently
In other post in this forum you can find two pics with little pcb drawing to put a 64k eprom into ql's rom socket.
Cheers
Paolo

Sorry for my late reply ,

But i found qdisc 1.19 occupies the whole eprom ..........

And also tkII occupies the same amount of space.

Unfortunaltely it won't be possible to merge those on one eprom .

Who can inform me about the start addresses of the respective modules ( rom , romport-module , expansionport ).


techy

All,

it's probably worth mentioning that QDOS will be looking for a valid ROM header at $C000 as well as starting at $C0000 up to $DFFFF in 16k increments. Early ROMS failed to detect add-on ROMs beyond the first possible slot at $C0000 (I think JS was the first to do that correctly). The ROM header format can be looked up in the QDOS Technical Guide.

Regards,
Tobias

Thank you all who replied

interesting info , i will have a look into that next weekend.

Right now i am waiting for the hardware to arrive , so i can start testing next saturday.


And , also i have found the ql / qdos technical guide , which makes searching a lot easier .


techy