Q68 WIN drives

[dilwyn]

Q68 received and up and running, although I immediately ran into issues.

1. I have several PS2 keyboard and mice here. Only one keyboard and mouse work, sadly they are different colours. Also, interestingly, the older ones fail to work (even after trying swapping the mouse/keyboard connections as suggested on the Forum in the past). Only the newer pair work. I did try the others on an old PC I have here, they all work fine on that, so not faulty, just not Q68 compatible.

2. Can't get the Q68 to recognise any .WIN drives at all, either on the supplied master SD card or my 8GB SDHC card I prepared and copied the files to.
- I formatted my 8GB SDHC card in Windows 10 as FAT32. Then one by one copied the files from the SD card supplied with the Q68 to the new card (via the PC hard drive, it only has one SD slot).
- Both cards read fine in Windows and the WIN files can be read by QPC2.
- The Q68 boots into SMSQ/E OK, so it clearly recognises the card.
- PRINT WIN_DRIVE$(n) reports that drive 1 is QLWA.WIN and drive 8 is Q68_SMSQ.WIN, others are unset.

I have more SDHC cards on order, but I doubt that's the issue as I can't even access what's on the SD card supplied with the Q68 (although perfectly readable on the PC). I presume it's something I'm doing wrong or not understanding from the manual.

At this point I'm stumped and need help with this. Asking here first, as Derek is no doubt up to his ears in building and shipping the machines.

I'm very impressed with the build of the Q68 by the way. Lovely case, Derek has done an excellent job fitting in all the connectors.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi Dilwyn

Q68 received and up and running, although I immediately ran into issues.

1. I have several PS2 keyboard and mice here. Only one keyboard and mouse work, sadly they are different colours. Also, interestingly, the older ones fail to work (even after trying swapping the mouse/keyboard connections as suggested on the Forum in the past). Only the newer pair work. I did try the others on an old PC I have here, they all work fine on that, so not faulty, just not Q68 compatible.

Not all PS/2 devices are truely copmpatiable with the PS/2 standard. Most PS/2 Mouse and keyboard have work, but I guess there are many more to test. If you supply me with the make and model of the mouse and ketboard, I will have a look at any issues

2. Can't get the Q68 to recognise any .WIN drives at all, either on the supplied master SD card or my 8GB SDHC card I prepared and copied the files to.
- I formatted my 8GB SDHC card in Windows 10 as FAT32. Then one by one copied the files from the SD card supplied with the Q68 to the new card (via the PC hard drive, it only has one SD slot).
- Both cards read fine in Windows and the WIN files can be read by QPC2.
- The Q68 boots into SMSQ/E OK, so it clearly recognises the card.
- PRINT WIN_DRIVE$(n) reports that drive 1 is QLWA.WIN and drive 8 is Q68_SMSQ.WIN, others are unset.

I have more SDHC cards on order, but I doubt that's the issue as I can't even access what's on the SD card supplied with the Q68 (although perfectly readable on the PC). I presume it's something I'm doing wrong or not understanding from the manual.

The Q68 has to initialise the Card in the SD Card slot, when the Q68 boots it reads the operating system from the SD Card.

The supplied SD Card is configured to load SMSQ/E v3.38 from the QWA container file: Q68_SMSQE.WIN on Card 1, and is setup as WIN8

The main storage is WIN1 defined in the SMSQ/E config blocks as: QLWA.WIN on card slot 1. Which should read the boot file.

Other QWA containers are included on the SD Card as examples: Black Phoenix v1.5 : "BP15.WIN" and QL/E: "QLE.WIN"

Use the WIN_DRIVE command to load a QWA coantainer:

WIN_DRIVE win-no,Card-no, QWA-Filename

To load QL/E to WIN2 use the WIN_DRIVE command:

WIN_DRIVE 2,1,"QLE.WIN"

The supplied example boot files define QLE or BP15 as WIN1, then LRUN WIN1_BOOT

If the SD Card is in Card Slot 2, you must initialise the SD Card, otherwise the Q68 will not know about the structure of the SD Card. So

CARD_INIT 2

Initialises SD Card in Slot 2

PRINT CARD_DIR$(2)

Will display the files on Card 2 in the FAT32 parition

If QL.WIN is a valid QWA container file on Card 2, then do:

WIN_DRIVE 2,2,"QL.WIN"

Should load QL.WIN to WIN2

If you have copied the QWA files onto a new SD Card in to a new FAT32 partition, the files must reside in the first 16 entries of the FAT32 table, I have not used WIndows to do this but I will test this out this afternoon with Windows 10.

At this point I'm stumped and need help with this. Asking here first, as Derek is no doubt up to his ears in building and shipping the machines.

I'm very impressed with the build of the Q68 by the way. Lovely case, Derek has done an excellent job fitting in all the connectors.

Thank you for the nice comments.

[dilwyn]

Thank you Derek. Looks like I'm doing everything correctly.

I'd understand it if my card wouldn't work (so many ways to get this wrong with Q68), but I can't even get the one supplied with the Q68 to work. Even though the one supplied reads OK in Windows and on QPC2 (and I was careful not to write back to it when trying).

I just get "Not Found" with any command trying to access WIN or FAT drives.

I'll go back to reformatting my SD card again with the SDFormatter and then try configuring the new card's SMSQE with MenuConfig on QPC2 to check that the file itself isn't damaged (i.e. showing up OK in lists of files, but something causing it not to recognise the .WIN files. Even the FAT16 partition on the supplied SD card can't be read on the Q68, although it reads OK on Windows.

No doubt some perverse mistake on my part will eventually show up.

[martyn_hill]

Hi Derek and Dilwyn

Just a thought that -shouldnt- be relevant, but might be...

Could the 'high-speed' card access configured by default in SMSQe v3.38 and earlier need dropping to normal access speeds?

It would be an easy enough thing to test, by running menuconfig against the SMSQe binary (within QPC2, for example) and resetting this property before rebooting.

[RichardCGH]

Received my Q68 and the SDHC yesterday.
It seems the SDHC is blank - my PC couldn't find any files on it.
So I contacted Derek, explained the problem and the replacement SDHC arrived today

This time round the Q68 booted perfectly.

For someone who hasn't touched a QL for about 30 years the boot options rather threw me - do I go with QL/E or SMSQ/E ?
I think I went with SMSQ/E - how much difference there is in terms of compatibility with BBQL software I have no idea.

Tried one of my old PS2 trackball mice.
Looks like the mouse is knackered as I had problems getting it to move around the screen or do anything.

I'll order a new one (I have four others but they look even older.)
Keyboard works fine. (I'm using the supplied splitter.)

I've long since forgotten how to simple things on the QL whereas I'm OK with a GUI - I just need to point and click and hopefully things happen.

Looks like I've got plenty of exploring and learning to do.

As for the hardware Q68 - looks a very nifty piece of work, kudos and thanks to Derek for putting it all together into a very neat package.

[dilwyn]

Hi Derek and Dilwyn

Just a thought that -shouldnt- be relevant, but might be...

Could the 'high-speed' card access configured by default in SMSQe v3.38 and earlier need dropping to normal access speeds?

It would be an easy enough thing to test, by running menuconfig against the SMSQe binary (within QPC2, for example) and resetting this property before rebooting.

I'll try that when I get home (i.e. escape from Anglesey). Had seen it in the config options, but as it said "use faster (40MHz) SD Card Speed if available", I left it alone thinking that "if available" implied automatic detection - I wasn't too sure of what I was doing at that stage and didn't want to risk causing more problems until I knew what I was doing.

Before I went out, I ran through trying to boot the Q68 from the card Derek supplied again. It started OK in SMSQ/E but was still unable to find any .WINs. PRINT CARD_DIR$(1) returns "medium check failed" (the red light for card 2, not card 1, stayed on at that point, which confused me further).

[Derek_Stewart]

Must be problem with the SD Card.

I will look at the SD Cards I have.

[XorA]

Derek, have you changed your process recently, if you remember the card you sent me was slightly corrupted too!

Possibly your not flushing all the data to card?

[dilwyn]

Hi Dilwyn

Q68 received and up and running, although I immediately ran into issues.

1. I have several PS2 keyboard and mice here. Only one keyboard and mouse work, sadly they are different colours. Also, interestingly, the older ones fail to work (even after trying swapping the mouse/keyboard connections as suggested on the Forum in the past). Only the newer pair work. I did try the others on an old PC I have here, they all work fine on that, so not faulty, just not Q68 compatible.

Not all PS/2 devices are truely copmpatiable with the PS/2 standard. Most PS/2 Mouse and keyboard have work, but I guess there are many more to test. If you supply me with the make and model of the mouse and ketboard, I will have a look at any issues
[/quote

Two are unbranded keyboards, both with Made In Thailand stamped on them, but no manufacturer name or brand on them. They have PS2 plugs, not a USB+adaptor. The third keyboard is another unbranded one but with a USB plus and USB to PS2 adapter. I didn't expect this one to work. All three work fine with old Packard Bell Windows 10 PC which has PS2 connectors.

Don't suppose that the fact the ones which failed to work have numeric keypads is anything other than coincidence? Actually, a smaller keyboard suits me, since the desk isn't really wide enough for everything.

Both the mice which didn't work are also unbranded ones.

[dilwyn]

Hi Derek and Dilwyn

Just a thought that -shouldnt- be relevant, but might be...

Could the 'high-speed' card access configured by default in SMSQe v3.38 and earlier need dropping to normal access speeds?

It would be an easy enough thing to test, by running menuconfig against the SMSQe binary (within QPC2, for example) and resetting this property before rebooting.

Yup, that did the trick. Thanks Martyn. As you said, Martyn, you wouldnt have expected it, but it did the difference. I _thought_ it was odd that QPC2/Windows 10 read the card perfectly OK, but the Q68 only seemed to manage to access the first thing on the card, the SMSQE.

Only tried Derek's card after that change which works OK in both slots with that option changed thanks to help from QPC2 to do the config.

The other SD card is reformatting at the moment, so I can put a FAT16 partition on it as well. Will let you know how I get on with that.

Thanks everyone who replied, Derek will I'm sure be relieved to hear it seems to have been nothing more than the card speed configuration.