#: 144918 S1/General/Help
    07-Apr-87  11:00:50
Sb: PDD-2
Fm: Mark Earle 73117,351
To: ALL

The PDD 2 is a 200k portable disk drive for the Model 100, 102, and 200. I've
had mine a few days now; thought of sharing a few observations.

The software to drive it is FLOPPY on the main menu. The IPL procedure is
somewhat different than the original PDD. A problem exists if you set MAXFILES
to zero, the IPL dies; if you type list you can see the actual IPL software.
To get it to work set MAXFILES=2 then follow the procedure in the book.

Backup is now a basic program which must be loaded into memory, and works with
FLOPPY. In a 24K M100, with FLOPPY and BACKUP.BA there is 17k remaining,
meaning to backup a disk takes about 10 minutes and 15 swaps.

Note on IPL-The utility disk MUST be write protected (window open) else the
program won't work. Mysteriouly, it does not give an error-it just dies.
Aparently they can check the status of write protect-there should be an error
status. Especially since the text and figure are transposed in the book,
making it tough to figure out which way on the disk is write-protect.

The computer to pdd cable is now cream colored instead of black.

This PDD-2 stores up to 80 files in two 'banks' selected with a function key.
So there is room for 80 file names. When you do a file list, it is
automatically alphabetized. Nice touch.

There are no dip switches to set on this unit. The software resets himem to
60000. The software will fit in an 8k machine! Leaves 2.3k free..

Overall I'm very happy with this product.

Mark