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QL-SD User Manual 14
because you decided to put everything into the root directory). As QL-SD comes with a fully-
fledged Level 2 device driver, you can use „real“ directories provided you are using at least TK2
(Which normally comes with the QL-SD ROM).
6.2.1. Organise your Disk Space
We would recommend a basic structure that employs a „sys_“ directory that is going to hold
everything that you want loaded at BOOT time using LRESPR. This makes maintenance of file
locations, versions and updates much easier. Another one would be a „progs_“ directory that would
hold all frequently used executable programs that
do not expect a specific subdirectory structure
and do not store a lot of support files in their program directory ( we just got rid of the mess in the
root directory - you do not want to have it here instead).
Executables that do not fall into this category (Psion Exchange or C68 might be examples) should
go into a directory of their own. Obviously, you would then have to remember where you have put
that program before you would be able to start it - This is where the pth_, dev_ and sub device dri-
vers (see next paragraph) come into play.
Note how the example picked pretty short names for the directory names - Make sure you don’t
choose too long path names for the first level directories - A QL path name is restricted to 36 bytes
of length (not including the „sdc1_“ device name), no reason to waste a single character.
6.2.2. Create a WORK_ directory
With a large disk like QL-SD, it is very easy to end up with a completely cluttered root directory
after some time of work - Make sure that when you start a new project (programming, word
processing, whatever...), you create a new directory under sdc1_work_ and put everything that
belongs to that project into that directory. You want your root directory clean and tidy without having
to search a long time for a file you created last week.
6.2.3. The MAKE_DIR Command
MAKE_DIR is a command that comes with QL Toolkit 2. MAKE_DIR creates a „real“ Level 2
directory on QL-SD (or other Level 2 storage devices). Level 2 directories are special files in the file
system that hold the names of all further files contained in this directory. You can easily distinguish
Level 2 directories from normal files - They are marked with a “->“ following the directory name
when you issue a „DIR“ command on the drive. MAKE_DIR takes one string argument - the full
name of the directory to be created. MAKE_DIR takes account of the TK2 data defaults.
Level 2 directories should be created before the actual files that go into them are copied to the
directory - So, if you have a number of files like
sdc1_work_file_asm
sdc1_work_file_rel
sdc1_work_another_file
You might want to first create the directory sdc1_work (By issuing the command „MAKE_DIR
sdc1_work“)
before
you actually copy the files there. Doing it the other way round will work just as
well - and move already existing files with matching names into the new directory, but might waste
disk space.
Level 2 directories can be deleted just like normal files using the DELETE command, but only if
they no longer contain any files - You must first make sure a directory is empty before you can
actually delete it.
If you don’t have a proper MAKE_DIR command, the images on the supplied SDHC card have a
binary that implements MAKE_DIR and can be loaded into any QL.