Quick Release Sector Transfer

Revision as of 15:17, 11 December 2023

The QRST disc image format was used by Compaq to distribute disk images of diagnostic software. The file QRST.EXE or QRST5.EXE would be supplied with the disc images to write them to a floppy drive.

Identification

QRST files start with the 4-character ASCII string QRST. The first character of the file extension is an underscore, followed by a 2-digit hexadecimal (version <5) or decimal (version 5) volume number.

Structure

File header

The file begins with a 796-byte header:

Version 5 extends the header with an additional 25 bytes:

Version <5 data

In versions below 5, the header will be followed by the data tracks. These can be in one of three forms:

Uncompressed track

Blank track

Compressed track

The compressed data stream consists of alternating literal runs (a byte giving the length of the run, followed by that number of bytes data) and compressed runs (two bytes; first gives number of repeats, second gives byte to repeat).

Version 5 data

In version 5, the data is an entire disk image compressed with PKWARE Data Compression Library's Implode. (This is not the same as PKZIP's Implode.)

Checksum

In versions below 5, the checksum is the sum of all bytes on the disc, each byte multiplied by (1 + its offset on the disc). So for a 360k disc it would be (1 * first byte of first sector) + (2 * second byte of first sector) + ... + (368640 * last byte of last sector).

In version 5, the CRC-32 covers the compressed data.

Multiple disc images in one file

At least one QRST file is known to exist which contains two disc images -- it has the structure of two separate QRST files concatenated together, each one describing itself as volume 1 of 1.

Software

• LIBDSK

Sample files

• Compaq Portable III setup and diagnostics
• QRST file containing two concatenated disc images
• https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/archive/qrst/