Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Nagging hardware related question? Post here!
Retro-Mania
ROM Dongle
Posts: 28
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2019 8:18 am

Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by Retro-Mania »

Hello everyone

Now that I have my Gold Card up and working I was wondering where I would find a suitable disk drive for my QL?

Can anyone suggest any resources or recommend any particular source?

Thanks in advance!


User avatar
tofro
Font of All Knowledge
Posts: 2685
Joined: Sun Feb 13, 2011 10:53 pm
Location: SW Germany

Re: Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by tofro »

Ben Versteeg in the Netherlands sells a cute little dual-drive set that works well with the GoldCard.

https://www.bytedelight.com/?product=du ... ydrive-set

I use that myself and can recommend it. Note the drives are 1.44M type that might have problems (not experienced here) reading DD disks. DD drives are really impossible to find these days.

In the other hand, you might consider not using floppy drives at all, but rather a GoTek + FlashFloppy (that is, you're actually accessing disk images stored on a USB stick). Works just as well, but for that I don't know a vendor that would sell complete sets.

Tobias


ʎɐqǝ ɯoɹɟ ǝq oʇ ƃuᴉoƃ ʇou sᴉ pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ʇxǝu ʎɯ 'ɹɐǝp ɥO
Retro-Mania
ROM Dongle
Posts: 28
Joined: Tue Oct 22, 2019 8:18 am

Re: Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by Retro-Mania »

tofro wrote:Ben Versteeg in the Netherlands sells a cute little dual-drive set that works well with the GoldCard.

https://www.bytedelight.com/?product=du ... ydrive-set

I use that myself and can recommend it. Note the drives are 1.44M type that might have problems (not experienced here) reading DD disks. DD drives are really impossible to find these days.

In the other hand, you might consider not using floppy drives at all, but rather a GoTek + FlashFloppy (that is, you're actually accessing disk images stored on a USB stick). Works just as well, but for that I don't know a vendor that would sell complete sets.

Tobias
Thank you Tobias! Helpful as always!!! Very much appreciated!

Neil


User avatar
Chr$
QL Wafer Drive
Posts: 1304
Joined: Mon May 27, 2019 10:03 am
Location: Sachsen, Germany
Contact:

Re: Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by Chr$ »

Get a cheap ex-PC floppy drive (the type that you virtually can't even give away these days). It'll most likely be internally jumpered as DS1 (which will be FLP2_ on a QL) but many can easily be changed to FLP1_ (DS0) via solder pads inside or swapping a wire over. Some older PC drives used to have a physical jumper to swap over, so look out for one that looks like it has a jumper at the back near the connectors. That's what I have and it works fine with both 1.44 and 720k disks.


https://QXL.WIN
Collector of QL related computers, accessories and QL games/software.
Ask me about felt pads - I can cut them to size and they have proved excellent for mdv data recovery.
Derek_Stewart
Font of All Knowledge
Posts: 3928
Joined: Mon Dec 20, 2010 11:40 am
Location: Sunny Runcorn, Cheshire, UK

Re: Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by Derek_Stewart »

Hi,

The disk drives look nice, but at £69.99 plus shipping is expensive, there seems to no bulk order price reduction.

I did think of building twin disk drives similiar to the Miracle twin drives.

The case is simple Anodized steel construction, with adpated PC disk drives to suit the QL.


Regards,

Derek
User avatar
bwinkel67
QL Wafer Drive
Posts: 1187
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2019 2:09 am

Re: Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by bwinkel67 »

How about a GoTek? I have an old Kempston disk interface that I still have lying around and eventually I want to see if GoTek works with it.


stephen_usher
Gold Card
Posts: 429
Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2014 8:00 pm
Location: Oxford, UK.
Contact:

Re: Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by stephen_usher »

GoTek units running Flashfloppy works fine except that you can't format double-sided disk images as the QJUMP floppy code uses a trick to determine if a drive is single sided or not which only works on real hardware. The way around this is to create a blank, formatted floppy image in an emulator and copy it onto the drive.

Access does seem slower than a real floppy for some reason.


User avatar
NormanDunbar
Forum Moderator
Posts: 2251
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2010 9:04 am
Location: Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
Contact:

Re: Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by NormanDunbar »

Alternatively, create images with "qltools" from https://github.com/SinclairQL/qltools/releases/latest

Cheers,
Norm.


Why do they put lightning conductors on churches?
Author of Arduino Software Internals
Author of Arduino Interrupts

No longer on Twitter, find me on https://mastodon.scot/@NormanDunbar.
User avatar
bwinkel67
QL Wafer Drive
Posts: 1187
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2019 2:09 am

Re: Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by bwinkel67 »

stephen_usher wrote:GoTek units running Flashfloppy works fine except that you can't format double-sided disk images as the QJUMP floppy code uses a trick to determine if a drive is single sided or not which only works on real hardware. The way around this is to create a blank, formatted floppy image in an emulator and copy it onto the drive.

Access does seem slower than a real floppy for some reason.
Great. I will be interested to see if my Kempston works because it's a pre GC disk interface form the late 80's. I used it on a true floppy in the day but want to see it work with GoTek. The floppy is since gone. Then I'll put a USB to SD converter in and voila, I will have SD on both ends of the QL (vDrive and GoTek). The GoTek will definitely be faster than vDrive. Reading Charles page, he did mention he had considered adding a boost function to vDrive though I'm also torn because I do like that it emulated the original microdrive in speed...still, maybe there is a firmware update in our distant future :-/


RWAP
RWAP Master
Posts: 2834
Joined: Sun Nov 28, 2010 4:51 pm
Location: Stone, United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Floppy Disk Drive Options?

Post by RWAP »

I have a box of old cases and old drives - Derek - do you want to see if you can put some together to make a set or two?

I also have one bare ED disk drive!


Post Reply