Q Drive 1241

[scuzzb494]

Hi

Anyone have any idea what cd device and DOSDriver mount file may look like for the Amiga Technologies 1241 Q Drive. I don't have any documatation or disk with the drive. Comes up as CC0 Unit 3 on the early boot screen but refuses to work with cd.device and unit 3 set from the tooltype. The unit does power at various times when say scanning Storage in Workbench and the CD opens and takes a disk but just not activated in the Workbench and DOpus doesn't recognise the drive from trying to configure a button to use it.

http://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/car_0507/a_scuzz_retro_0507_166.jpg

All help appreciated.

[scuzzb494]

What's inside CC0: when browsing with Workbench?

What ever was in CC0 was causing the software not to recognise the CDROM. I found the install disk at the Amiga resources site. So I moved the CC0 from Devs and it cleared all the issues.

[scuzzb494]

The software for the Q Drive is the same as the Archos Overdrive CD and is very sloppy. I believe it's the disk-based amiquest.device. Do not run the official installer or it will seriously muck up your SYS: partition.

Whoops... I retrieved both the install and boot from the Amiga resources site and installed the software. I am OS3.0 so its quite a harmless problem here. The device is a cd.device and L holds the QDriveFileSystem. Unit is 2. The old file system was CDFileSystem.

Seems to be working. I have been checking through some old Aminet disks and the drive is finding everything. Very quiet little unit. Been sitting around cus I couldn't establish what power supply is needed. Someone just created a website and featured the drive [ all in German ] but gave the power supply details. The Big Book only has the Squirrel connector it doesn't show the drive.

[scuzzb494]

Looks like the disk from the Amiga hardware database is slightly newer than what I have... that's good. But keep checking what the installer did - it may have messed with your startup-sequence - and review the readme. I think amiquest.device is still kicking around somewhere in there, possibly in the ROM of the PCMCIA adapter (Scout or SysInfo will tell you if it's active). A different device and filesystem seem to be used depending on whether you're doing CD32 emulation or not. See the install disk's Devs/DOSDrivers/CD0 vs. Storage/DOSDrivers/CD0.

Bottom line, I found that it works alright on a more or less stock system, but if there's anything nonstandard about your OS installation (before or after you install) then something breaks. I recommend a manual installation.

The tracking here is a bit problematic as I had a Squirrel on the machine before and it also had the PowerComputing CDRom and all that added CD32 emulation. There is no CD0 in storage though I did make a copy of CD0 that was in DEVS before the changes. They are different to take the L:QDriveFileSystem. There is also an added line for Control "Fb=32

CD0 43.1(10.05.96) as opposed to the older one of CD0 40.6 (31.8.93)

There are lines in the startup about activating CD0 from storage, though is not there plus versions of the startup sequence.std including links to CD32-Startup which may have been added when I added the Squirrel, though the Squirrel activated through the user-startup.

I guess I could unravel everything by removing all the Squirrel stuff but in truth the cd appears to be working with Amiga CDs. I say that cus it fails to read some of my own recorded CDs but that isn't a problem. I have other machines that can read CDs generally. Probably the limitations of the QDriveFileSystem... maybe change that and see what happens.

All good fun.

[scuzzb494]

You could rename the CD0 of the Squirrel to SCD or something, it doesn't have to be called CD0. I'm thinking it may possibly avoid some confusion, especially if you were to hot swap the drives or something.

Its not a bad idea as I am like to forget. I have the Squirrel on another computer given that the PowerComputing CDROM burnt out on this machine.

I don't think the file system is up to the challenge of modern CDs and I have been experimenting with others but with no joy. When I changed the filesystem the machine just refused to boot and I got a green flashing light. I generally keep copies of everything I do so its not a problem reverting back, though in this case it involved booting from the floppy.

The other issue I guess is that there may be something wrong with the drive itself. It reads the Amiga disks but really struggles with copy CDs that I have created. The CDs work on my other Amigas so its not a problem with the CD. I have cleaned the heads but hasn't made any difference. Could be a speed issue or something dunno. They just don't activate and spin up.

I do think the file system is an issue. On the Aminet disk it refused to go deeper down the tree than three or four folders.

The drive is fine otherwise, and like I say will suit what I am doing. Just handy having drive for some of my demo disks that I have. Work in progress. As ever.