The Sinclair QL Forum

I got 1589 (1673 when using ram1_ instead of win1_) on an i7-4790. My machine is multi-boot and I mostly use Windows 7. I also have a Win10 installation but use it mostly for testing (I don't like the new user interface) and a Linux Mint installation. Update: When I set QPC to native 512x256 resolut...

Does that still happen with the direct sector access routines? With direct sector access a physical definition block may not exist. The message is printed by the gap interrupt handler, not by the MD.SECTR vector itself. In addition, a flag at offset $23 in the physical definition block is set that ...

Chaps, It looks as if some MDV buffers are emptied onto channel #0, could these be the slave blocks beeing cleared? If a physical MDV error occurs the medium name will be printed followed by 'bad or changed medium'. The medium name is stored in the physical definition block at offset $16 to $1F. If...

Hi, I used to have a nearly full collection of German Quasar magazines until we had a flooded basement many years ago and I had to throw away nearly all of them. Preservation is happening a lot here around the QL - Does anyone have a full collection that could be preserved or even is scanned alread...

Hi Tomas, Jan, My Simple 512K RAM addon, completes this benchmark in 17secs. 100 ram=RESPR(16): RESTORE 140 110 FOR p=ram TO ram+14 STEP 2: READ x: POKE_W p,x 125 t=DATE: CALL ram 130 PRINT "Test complete in ";DATE-t;" seconds." 140 DATA 28771,29439,20937,-2,20936,-8,28672,20085 ...

I would think the easiest way would be to try to read a sector header (MD.SECTR) and if it does a 'normal' (bad medium) return rather than a 'normal+4' (OK) return. Then assume there is no cartridge present. This seems the best way indeed. I've taken a look at the MD.SECTR code and it does wait for...

Martin, Jan, Tobias, .., All Pleanty of feedback I have got, to delve into studying more. Gap 1 (that's the one between the sector header, you've just read, and the start of the block header that you want to overwrite) is 3600us. That's three and a half thousands of a second. Just curious, how many...

Hi All, I didn't realise that there is a way to force a re-read of the MDV map: Use the TK2 DEL_DEFB command! This clears all physical definition blocks (including stored MDV maps) so the MDV driver must re-read everything! I believe it was included in TK2 to reduce heap fragmentation (physical defi...

I was somehow able to write sectors from the very start, but I was failing to see the results, as I realised I needed to remove just written OLD cart, put a NEW one in, do DIR on it - to trigger MEDIA CHANGE, put the OLD back, this possibly is the effect of RANDOM numbers? Hi Tomas, I wrote an exte...

I think calling fs_flush might help? Perhaps? I'm not near a QDOS manual so I might be wrong! Cheers, Norm. FS_FLUSH works at file level (it writes out buffers, much like doing a CLOSE but without actually closing the file). You can't force a reread of the map or directory unless you resort to dirt...