Msg: 1467 *Conference*
02-03-92 19:07:07
From: RICHARD HANSON
To : RUEBAN BENDAVID
Subj: REPLY TO MSG #1466 (SPECULATION)
Okay, good questions. When Tandy issued the TPDD (Tandy Portable Disk Drive) it came with a utility disk (boot disk) with FLOPPY.CO; a machine language disk operating system. It wasn't the best but it did work. The TPDD via FLOPPY.CO formatted disks to 100K, 40 files per 1 directory. Rivel DOSes came to market, i.e., POWR-DOS, POWR-Disk, TS-DOS, DSKMGR. They all survived to some extent with TS-DOS being the only commercial DOS available, still. And the only DOS available on disk or option ROM. A few years later, Tandy brought out the TPDD2 (Tandy Portable Disk Drive 2). The TPDD2 also came with a utility disk (boot disk) with FLOPPY; a machine language disk operating system. But unlike the old FLOPPY.CO, FLOPPY (you called it FLOPPY-2... wrong again, dude!), linked itself into the system RAM area where no program should link--this is a simple way of saying that "we" are not too thrilled about FLOPPY. Anyway, to make a short story long, FLOPPY gets in the way of 3rd party option ROM's. FLOPPY does work, and formats disks to 200K, with 2, 40 file directories. To be canded, FLOPPY.CO and FLOPPY have one good feature per their respective drives: They provide image backup. Image backup, aka sector-by-sector backup allow one to duplicate "any" disk, including all bootable disks, i.e., TS-DOS bootable system disks. This is how we [Club 100] duplicate TS-DOS disks. (wink!) Booster Pac is an add-on device developed many years ago for the Model 100 computer, allowing that computer to access more onboard memory as storage, and to access multiple ROM's. The Booster Pac is a very nice unit to own and use and used to be still available from Purple Computing in Murphy, OR, until just reciently. I've heard word that Larry berg does not want to mess around with Booster Pac's from now on. So, except for available used, Booster Pac is history... future! I certinly hope these ramblings are to your satisfaction. -Rick- PS: Thank you for mixing cases in your text. It's much appreciated.