QL-HDD card with ISA-CF as Win1_ Possible?

[Chr$]

I have a working (most of the time) QL 'beast' with an ABC German Jürgen Falkenberg QL-HDD card installed. By way of a plugged in ISA adapter card it is attached to a monster 20mb Seagate drive.

It looks like this (actually couldn't find any pics of one online so feel free to add to the Wiki https://qlwiki.qlforum.co.uk/doku.php?id=qlwiki:qlhdd):

I wondered if it would be possible to do away with the slightly unreliable and very loud Seagate and replace the whole thing with this ISA to CF storage device:

If I were to try that, is there anything I'd need to be aware of? Would I be able to format it with the Falkenberg provided winform_exe (which I don't think I have) or would I need to use something else? (the original instructions refer to the QL-HDD only being compatible with a small number of RLL or MFM drives).

[Ruptor]

The ISA bus is a hardware standard so electrically it is OK but software wise your board is expecting to see a disc identified in a particular way that will not be identified by the driver so it will ignore it I would guess.

[Chr$]

Yes, probably. I suspect someone very clued up on these matters could get them to talk to each other. Both have software in EPROMS. I suppose I ought to remove the 'prom in the HDD card and post it's contents. Perhaps it uses something widely available that others may have seen before, or perhaps it can be changed to work with the modern CF adapter somehow. I bet it can, but it's way too techie for me.

Or it might just plug in and work! (I've not tried it yet).

[Chr$]

For future reference (and for any one that ever searches for it), here is the ROM data from the Jürgen Falkenberg QL-HDD card. The EPROM is an ST M27256FI and is labelled "HDD-Drive 3.07" with a logo and the company name Computer Technik.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

I have one these Falkenberg XT interfaces. The Falkenberg Hard Drive interface is a copy of the Dirk Steinkoph QL-HDD.

I do not think Falkenberg had anything to do with ABC Electronik

I doubt whether the XT-CF ISA card would work, because the QL-HDD driver code was designed to work with MFM/RLL drives.

But I think it is worth a try, maybe the CF Card emulates harddrive. As thd format process requires the number sectors to be known.

I uploaded Dirk Stienkoph's QL-HDD files as a zip file to Dilwyn's web site, quite a while ago.

I have converted the circuit diagram from PIC to PNG, I will upload it later on.

[Peter]

I have a working (most of the time) QL 'beast' with an ABC German Jürgen Falkenberg QL-HDD card installed. By way of a plugged in ISA adapter card it is attached to a monster 20mb Seagate drive.

It is definitely not an ISA card, but a PC/XT card. Both the original card and driver do not support IDE/ATAPI and therefore no CompactFlash.

But I think it is worth a try, maybe the CF Card emulates harddrive.

Normally there's no chance without a driver rewrite for IDE/ATAPI. I knew the QL-HD driver quite well, because I rewrote it for SDHC cards.

Which, by the way, almost became the original driver release for QL-SD. I always found QL-HD a stable driver, and like the fact that it is partially written in C. I just had to leave some CHS related code active and did not find the time for a full LBA re-implementation. That lack of elegance, and other circumstances, eventually led to a distant Qubide derivative being the first driver released for QL-SD instead.

BUT: The depicted PC/XT card (not the CF card) might do the job of "translating" MFM/RLL to IDE. That is unlikely. It looks more like an IDE controller for PC/XT that has been "pimped" toward CompactFlash.

Update: I searched for "XT-CF-Lite" and it is indeed just like a PC/XT IDE controller, not implementing an MFM/RLL interface. No chance with unmodified driver.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi Peter,

Would the XT-CF-Lite work in a Q60?

[Chr$]

I have a working (most of the time) QL 'beast' with an ABC German Jürgen Falkenberg QL-HDD card installed. By way of a plugged in ISA adapter card it is attached to a monster 20mb Seagate drive.

It is definitely not an ISA card, but a PC/XT card. Both the original card and driver do not support IDE/ATAPI and therefore no CompactFlash.

But I think it is worth a try, maybe the CF Card emulates harddrive.

Normally there's no chance without a driver rewrite for IDE/ATAPI. I knew the QL-HD driver quite well, because I rewrote it for SDHC cards.

Which, by the way, almost became the original driver release for QL-SD. I always found QL-HD a stable driver, and like the fact that it is partially written in C. I just had to leave some CHS related code active and did not find the time for a full LBA re-implementation. That lack of elegance, and other circumstances, eventually led to a distant Qubide derivative being the first driver released for QL-SD instead.

BUT: The depicted PC/XT card (not the CF card) might do the job of "translating" MFM/RLL to IDE. That is unlikely. It looks more like an IDE controller for PC/XT that has been "pimped" toward CompactFlash.

Update: I searched for "XT-CF-Lite" and it is indeed just like a PC/XT IDE controller, not implementing an MFM/RLL interface. No chance with unmodified driver.

Thanks Peter. Understood. In that case, I won't even bother trying it then!

[Peter]

Would the XT-CF-Lite work in a Q60?

Yes with a small change in the SMSQ/E IDE driver. But that would be pointless since it is only an 8 bit interface, while the Q60 ISA bus has 16 bit.
If you want to use card media in the Q60, an IDE to SD card converter is the much better solution.