Martin Head has written a device driver for emulating the microdrive cartridges as used in the Sinclair QL, as a file stored on another device. He wrote it after coming across an old box of microdrive cartridges of his in a cupboard and deciding to copy and preserve them before they became unusable.

It was specifically developed for use with QPC2, but should work with most emulators. Since QL compatible systems generally have no microdrives, this lets you use saved microdrive images on emulators. It includes images of Quill, Archive, Abacus and Easel.

To create your own images of microdrives, you will need a real QL with working microdrives and read the text file “Creating_Images_txt” supplied to see which program to use and how to go about it. Apparently even microdrive ‘random number’ finger prints are copied, allowing even some protected older programs to be run!

The driver lets you ‘mount’ the image files created from your microdrive cartridges, and use them from an emulator. You can load and save from/to these microdrive images.

Martin is currently soliciting opinions as to whether a similar floppy disk imaging system might be of interest, now that many users have emulators on computers with no floppy disk drives. No further news on that as yet.

The MDI Driver may be downloaded free from my website at http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/utils/index.html or from http://www16.zippyshare.com/v/68973691/file.html