Trying to load Quill2.35 on QEmulator

[Derek_Stewart]

I have been insisting on the zip conversion process, because I may want to convert other software in that format, that does not have any vDrive versions.

Hi,

Great, but you will have to understand QDOS file headers and te attached QDOS files on emulated QLs, which ad the QDOS header to the start of each file.

But emulators alike Q-emulator (registered) can remove the QDOS file header and make the file QDOS compatable.

I general, I extract zip or other archived files up files into a QDOS/SSQ/E environment.

If there is a QDOS file header stuck on the front of the file, I use Q-Emulator or SMSQmulator to copy the files from a native file directory to a QDOS directory, which removed the QDOS file header and is not QL compatable.

There are now new UNZIP programs to do all this, but I do it the old and easy way...

[XorA]

Great, but you will have to understand QDOS file headers and te attached QDOS files on emulated QLs, which ad the QDOS header to the start of each file.

Not if he uses mdvtool he wont!

[dilwyn]

Not sure if you've worked out yet why Quill won't start without a blank cartridge in MDV2_, so just in case...

As the unexpanded QL has only 128K of RAM, Quill needs to create a 'temporary' file called def_tmp on this drive in order for it to be able to work. Quill usually stops doing this if there is more RAM available. I'm not sure if drives like the vDrive use a little RAM of their own (some floppy disk interfaces do), if they do it makes Quill even more likely to decide to use temporary files.

The whole thing with executable headers is a recurring nightmare. While there are tools out there which work around this, it's never clear to first time users. Basically, if an attempt to start a program with EXEC or equivalent commands give a 'bad parameter' error, 99.9% of the time it just means the executable file header (a special header for EXEC programs) has been lost. The executable file header is a term which derives simply from the fact it's a program normally started with an EXEC or EXEC_W ir equivalent command. The most common ways for this loss of executable header to happen are:

1. It was zipped up this way.
2. It was unzipped to a non-QDOS drive or otherwise moved to a non-QDOS medium. DOS, Linux, Mac, Android don't understand QL executable file headers and they just get lost.
3. Some emulators such as QemuLator store the QL executable programs in a special format, by holding the executable file header inside the program, by adding a few bytes to the program, changing its length. Unfortunately, this makes the program a little unreadable to a BBQL (Black Box QL), because it doesn't understand the extra information. This was why we were trying to explain that this aspect is easily remedied in the right emulator by copying it to a QDOS format medium such as a QDOS format floppy disks - the emulator decides automatically if the program should be in normal QL file executable style by stripping off the extra info or adding it depending on whether it's QL format. The QemuLator manual describes the changes to such a file.

These "bad parameter" errors for executables can be fixed if you know what you're doing, but it's not for the faint hearted and has been explained here before. The method differs depending on whether it's a simple loss of header or files altered by an emulator. The methods are a bit too complicated to try to explain in one short answer here.

Hope that helps you to understand a bit of what's going on at least.

[RalfR]

Maybe it would be good to have an extension for QDOS or Minerva that eliminates the pre-header problem. The extension would have to expand the file system in such a way that it is just "invisible" as with the emulators.