New QL-SD driver

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mk79
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New QL-SD driver

Post by mk79 »

Wolfgang has now released my enhanced QL-SD driver at http://wlenerz.com/qlsd/

A short What's-New:
  • The driver version (currently 1.04) is shown in the ROM message plus a message if slot 1 could be initialised or not
  • Minerva/QDOS: If a card is found on boot then the device name will be briefly changed to MDV so that MDV1_boot can be found and immediately renamed back to WIN afterwards
  • There was a bug when reading and writing data at the same time. This alone should be enough reason to update the driver as it can corrupt the image
  • Added SGC support code and auto-detection of CPU speed. As said, a hardware mod is still needed for full GC/SGC compatibility. But if your card worked before it might work even better with this ROM
  • CARD_INIT defaults to slot 1 when no parameter is given
  • Card changes are detected automatically, so CARD_INIT is basically not needed anymore ;)
  • WIN2 defaults to QXL.WIN in slot 2, WIN3 defaults to QXL.WIN in slot 3 (if anybody ever had a slot 3 in the history of QL-SD ;) ). Except me and probably Peter, of course
  • Added command WIN_CHECK (same as on the Q68) that checks if the image file is continuous
  • Added SMSQ/E and QDOS compatibility. Only MGG and JS was tested, because these were already enough of a pain that I was afraid to check out anything older
  • Support for multi-block reads, so it should execute your boot file a tiny little bit faster
GC only: to get another speed bump load the _BIN driver again in your boot file, running the driver code from GC-RAM can up the speed noticably. You can probably run DEL_DEFB afterwards to release the memory that the ROM driver still held onto (not tested). Or LBYTES the driver code and issue CARD_INIT before the CALL to the new driver to release the memory of the ROM driver.

SGC and original QLs do not profit from this, so this is not needed.

Cheers, Marcel


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Peter
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Re: New QL-SD driver

Post by Peter »

mk79 wrote:[*]WIN2 defaults to QXL.WIN in slot 2, WIN3 defaults to QXL.WIN in slot 3 (if anybody ever had a slot 3 in the history of QL-SD ;) ). Except me and probably Peter, of course
The extra connector was meant to be reserved for other potential hardware add-on, not as SD card slot, so I never used it this way.


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mk79
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Re: New QL-SD driver

Post by mk79 »

Peter wrote:The extra connector was meant to be reserved for other potential hardware add-on, not as SD card slot, so I never used it this way.
Yes, actually it appeared to me this morning that this could be used to attach the MAX3421 and get USB keyboard and mouse support. The rest is just software ;)

Marcel


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