USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Discussion and advice about emulating the QL on other machines.
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dilwyn
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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by dilwyn »

Follwing this thread with interest.

The reason why I want to be able to use DD disks is that one of my QL systems only has DD disk drives and an old disk interface which does not support DD disk drives. I also still get sent DD disks in the post occasionally from people who want a copy of something on my website but haven't the experience/confidence/tools to download, transfer to QL, unzip etc. I still have a lot of old program disks on DD disks which I occasionally need to access, even though most have over time been copied over to other media.

It looks like RWAP and I have been lucky that we can use QDOS DD disks to various extents on our PC systems. My experience has always been that from Windows 7 onward it was very hit and miss. Reading online forums, it seems that the whole topic of floppy disks is hit and miss even for PC users.

Looks like all we can do is to follow the suggestions of RWAP and I as regards formatting, to try them out - the FORMAT command from DOS and the use of *D to "force" DD formatting. From Duncan's experience, it's obvious that even those tips aren't the answer to all the problems.


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Cristian
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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by Cristian »

RWAP wrote: Actually I have found disks previously formatted on the Amiga to be extremely unreliable when trying to reformat them on a QL - a high percentage failed to reformat or if they did, did not result in 1440/1440 sectors.
Indeed the failing percentage of Amiga disks is higher than other media, but I have to say that in my case the situation is not so terrible. I'm utilizing a hundred of Amiga600 disks: some does not result in 1440/1440 sectors, but they often are OK.
Anyway, it is possible that the previous Amiga owner took special care of his disks or utilized them rarely.

Regarding the main topic:
it is not uncommon that some disks are normally read by a drive but not recognised by a different drive. No two drives are identical (head alignments, magnetism etc.) even if they are the same model. Ql_Freak, you tried the disk on an external drive, then on the different internal drive. Did you use the same medium or have you tried other media as suggested by Rich?


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RalfR
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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by RalfR »

USB Floppy worked, if they use an NEC chip. Tested on XP, 8, 8.1 and 10. Just tested with DD.


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ql_freak
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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by ql_freak »

@Christian:

I have now tried nearly anything. It seems, it is not possible to access the native floppy drives (those connected to the 34 pin Shugart bus of the mainboard) on Windows 10 (v1803). Former (Windows) versions didn't even support native floppies (only USB floppies where working).

Most probably only Marcel is able to help.

I have formatted a HD floppy on windows (copied a file to it, made a DIR command (OK), and deleted the file. I.e. the disk is read and writeable with my drive. Afterwards formatted it with QPC2 (result: 2880/2880), but I could NOT copy anything to the disk, it has been always copied to WIN1_ with strange filenames (e.g.: WIN1_subdir_FLP1_filename).

Problem is, that it seems, I am the only one with a Windows 10 and native disk drives (USB-drive are working absolutely perfect with HD and DD). uQLx does not seem to support floppy disks directly, I'm afraid (only disk images seem to be supported). BTW: I'm afraid, I'm also the only user, who has uQLx running on Windows 10 with the Windows included WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).


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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by XorA »

BTW: I'm afraid, I'm also the only user, who has uQLx running on Windows 10 with the Windows included WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).
Nope, I tested it years ago, its just not massively useful to me :-D


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Cristian
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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by Cristian »

ql_freak wrote:Former (Windows) versions didn't even support native floppies
Do you mean former Windows 10 versions, am I right? (the normal, non-USB drive should be supported up to windows 7).
At this point, I'm afraid my theory about the cut-down windows driver is becoming true...


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ql_freak
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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by ql_freak »

Cristian wrote:
ql_freak wrote:Former (Windows) versions didn't even support native floppies
Do you mean former Windows 10 versions, am I right?
Yes you are right. Version 1803 of Windows 10 at least supports native floppy drives. Unfortunately it seems something is changed compared to Windows 7, as QPC2 cannot access the native floppy anymore :-(


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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by ql_freak »

duncan wrote:Windows 7 does not support access to QDOS DD 720k disks via a USB floppy disk drive to QPC2, so it is unlikely that Windows 10 will, HD 1.44MB QDOS floppy disks via a USB floppy disk drive are supported in Windows 7. Not having Windows 10 I cannot test that.
With my USB-Floppy I can read my old DD QL disks, haven't tried to format a DD-Disk or write to it (Windows 10).

BTW: If your USB-Disk is B:, uninstall it from Device Manager and deactivate the native floppy disk driver in device manager and eventually disable Floppy-support in BIOS (may be more than one entry). Then unplug the USB floppy for some seconds and plug it in again. It should now again be A:


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olifink
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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by olifink »

timely thread as I have been looking how to move files around again. I did a bit of digging and testing across various Windows 10 systems the problem is really with the drives. I tested with 1803 and 1809 on SurfaceBook 1 and Surface Go (with USB-C adapter) no difference here.

For DD, in addition to having the HD hole covered, the drive needs to support 720k. In my case I had a cheap external USB (CSL and a chinese no-name) which turned out to use the Matsushia chips. Trying to use or format with 80 tracks/9 sectors fails:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\olifi>format a: /t:80 /n:9
Insert new disk for drive A:
and press ENTER when ready...
The type of the file system is RAW.
The new file system is FAT.
Formatting 720 KB
Parameters not supported by drive.
Format failed.
So Ralfs point is spot on, because the NEC-based drives do support 720k/DD. After a couple of hours on eBay I ended up with the following

NEC UF0002
iomega X1DE-USB
Sony PCGA-UFD5 Floppy (Y-E DATA USB-FDU)

They all work fine with QPC and can format via DOS format /t:80 /n:9 followed by QPC format flp QL (+Tertroid QubATA) read/writable disks. The easiest to get seem to be the UF0002 for EUR 10 on eBay. The most difficult is the iomega, as the device driver is not recognised at plug-in, but if you pick NEC Systems USB Floppy driver from the Win10 list, it works fine (I found I had to unplug and re-plugin once though after driver update). Details are here: http://www.kentie.net/article/iomegausb/index.htm

I haven't tried DD or ED, because my old disks are all DD and Tretroid QubATA as I understand only supports 720k.

hope that helps somebody in future.

O


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tofro
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Re: USB Floppy Disk Device (Drive) with Support for Windows 10 and QPC2?

Post by tofro »

I did a quick check - At least my Windows 10 Installation does seem to no longer hold the NEC floppy disk driver that made my drive work on Win7

Tobias


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