The Sinclair QL Forum

Hi, my name is Scott and I live in Warwickshire,
I went to the ZZAP LIVE! the other week in Kenilworth (Where I used to live and also David Pleasance of Commodore who was there also used to live) and had a really great day - there is another one on the 23rd of November which will be Sinclair focused.
The following day I went to Princethorpe radio rally and found someone who had a QL with microdrives and two external drives (One 3 1/4 and the other a 5 1/4) which he let me have for £30 - amzingly it all works and I have run a demo on the Basic microdrive which came with it - so I am very pleased with my purchase.
I have a Spectrum +3 and also other systems such as a CDTV, CDi, Amiga 1200, Commodore Plus4, Atari 800XL and some more modern stuff such as GameCube and Dreamcast as well as a modded gameboy and also a game gear.
In the below pictures I have taken of the drives does anyone recognise these and also know how to use them (i'e' commands etc) I think they should work as the 3 1/4 does seem to spin disks but I have no idea about the switches on the back - I think it's a DD disk - would I be able to format disks and transfer using Amiga for example? (I have formatted PC disks on Amiga to transfer to my 486 laptop (Though now I've put a USB floppy in it)

Some more of the pics:

£30 was a bargain. I have no idea what the switches do, but did you also get a disk interface to connect the drive(s) to the QL? It will plug in to the long white connector on the left.

Thank you!
I don't have a disk interface connector though the white drive will connect into the serial port with the printer interface as it has the 6 pin connector

So that 3 1/2 inch white floppy use a parallel interface. I personally haven't seen a drive connected that way to the QL. There's an expansion slog on the left end of the QL where cards like a disk interface one plug in and that's where the black drives cable would go. The disk interface would give access to numbered flp devices (i.e. flp1_, flp2_) and you'd use normal QDOS commands to access the disks data (i.e. instead of dir mdv1_ you'd say dir flp1_)

An Amiga has its own format that cannot be read by other drives. However, the Amiga can write PC disks and I'm guessing QL ones with the right software. Btw, whoever you bought the QL from has changed the keyboard ribbon for you to a more recent/modern one, so that's nice. Also, that power supply looks different as well.

Thank you, yes it's a parellel to the ql serial converter - i'll have a play and look around to see if anything else comes up or if i can get it to work

Opening the 3 1/2 (Not 3 1/4) white drive I find it has an MGT board in it if that is of help - I tried switching on and connecting (Both to ser1 and 2) The disk is spinning but i can't do much - tried format flp1_ and format flp2_ (As well as dir flp1_ / flp2_ which just returns not found)

ScottC2024 wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2024 9:33 am Thank you, yes it's a parellel to the ql serial converter - i'll have a play and look around to see if anything else comes up or if i can get it to work

I didn't know that was possible/existed - floppy over centronics?!. Open up the 3.5" drive case, be interesting to see what's inside. Perhaps the dip switches are for baud rate, like on a printer.

ScottC2024 wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2024 11:25 am Opening the 3 1/2 (Not 3 1/4) white drive I find it has an MGT board in it if that is of help - I tried switching on and connecting (Both to ser1 and 2) The disk is spinning but i can't do much - tried format flp1_ and format flp2_ (As well as dir flp1_ / flp2_ which just returns not found)

I suspect it will need some kind of driver or something in ROM. What's the ROM pack I saw in one of the pics? Any label on it?

This may be useful if I get the drive to work (Or at least as something fun to try):

https://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/QDOS4amiga1