QL-SD section

 Picture of a SDHC card in a QL fitted with QL-SD

Last Updated: 31/07/18

This page is dedicated to the QL-SD add-on for the QL. The hardware was designed by Peter Graf and currently built and sold by Paul Veltjens through SellMyRetro.com. It consists of two small boards fitted to the QL, one of which replaces one of the original microdrive drives, since a microdrive slot is a suitable size for a SD-HC card socket. Note that only SD-HC cards can be used with QL-SD, not the older lower capacity SD cards. A second SDHC card socket can be added at the other microdrive slot. Keeping the SDHC card inside the QL case without removing a microdrive is also possible.

If anyone would like to make available any more software, documentation, or articles about QL-SD, please email it to me.

QL-SD manual - (850K) PDF file

QL-SD Starter Pack - (237K) the software supplied with QL-SD

BDI Specification - Specification of a simple and open interface for QL emulators, so native hardware drivers on the QL side can access block device images present on the emulator's host filesystem.
bdi_spec.txt - (3K) plain text file
BDI spec.pdf - (297K) PDF file version

QL-SD Driver Sources - (547K) released under GNU General Public License, these are the source files for the QL-SD drivers. Please read the PDF document supplied within the archive for guidance. [21/10/14]

QL-SD Hardware Sources - (69K) released under GNU General Public License.

Note that these are zip files.

qlsd_newdriver.zip (20K) - a driver to use standard qxl.win drives with QL-SD. Please read the documentation (in QL doc and text format, and as PDF. (Wolfgang Lenerz) [12/02/18]
qlsd_newdriver_src.zip (25K) - sources for the new QL-SD driver. You will also need the lastest sources for SMSQ/E. (Wolfgang Lenerz) [12/02/18]

qlsd.zip (30K) - enhanced version of the above qxl.win driver for QL-SD, updated by Marcel Kilgus. These should work with later QDOS versions (e.g. JS, MG, Minerva) and SMSQ/E. For reliable use with Gold Card/Super Gold Card, an update of a chip on the QL-SD may be necessary, contact Marcel Kilgus for cost and availability. Wolfgang Lenerz says that the sources will be included in the next SMSQ/E release (current SMSQ/E version is V3.32 at the time of writing) [17/04/18]

qlsd107_bin.zip (125K) - some users reported difficulty with the DEV driver when used with some systems and this resulted in a new version of the QL-SD driver for Minerva systems. Marcel wrote about this on QL Forum, to give someidea of why this update was necessary for Minerva users who use the DEV driver: "This QL-SD driver is the first "Level 3" style driver ever developed for QDOS and Level 3 drivers expect that they can change the size of the channel definition block. This works well enough in QDOS, but Minerva "helpfully" restores the original CDB pointer, which is of course invalid now. The QL-SD driver already had special code in the OPEN routine to deal with this, but what I didn't anticipate is that the OPEN routine might not have been called directly from Minerva but from, for example, the DEV Open routine! This resulted in a crash or other odd behaviour." The zip file includes modified English and German Minerva 1.98 ROM images, as well as RAM and ROM images of the QL-SD driver.

Marcel Kilgus is in the process of developing a new version of QL-SD (this is being written 19/08/18), which can have two SD card slots, for example, a micro-SD adaptor card, Gold Card compatibility and so on. See his page (including the new manual) at https://www.kilgus.net/ql/ql-sd/

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