★ HARDWARE ★ KDS BOARD ★ |
| Interface Rom - Kds Board (Amstrad Action) |
The KDS is a free-standing board, relying on your table for support rather than Arnold's expansion bus - or that's the theory. Unfortunately, the cable connecting the board to your Arnold is very short; so short, in fact, that it can't reach the 464's port with the case resting squarely on the table. If you don't want the board to dangle from the expansion bus, you'll need to prop it up with a book or the like. The reason for this short cable has to do with the 464 disk drive. If you want to use the DDI-1 with a ROM board, or any other expansion port peripheral, youll have to plug its interface into the peripheral's through-connector. Since the KDS board's through-connector is on the board itself, this means that the DDI-1 has to communicate with your 464 down the length of the board's connector cable. Now, the DDI-1 doesn't like having to use long bits of cable - so the ROM board cable had to be kept short or you wouldn't be able to use the DDI-1 with it. Got all that? The small, chunky case houses a meagre five sockets. To get at them you have to turn the case upside down, unscrew the base plate - no easy matter on the review copy - and flip the entire board out into your hand. This is awkward enough when the board's empty, but with ROMs in the end sockets you'll find you have real problems. The sockets are switched on and off by a set of DIP switches, but the single page of documentation gives no clue about the ROM numbers of the sockets. As it turns out. they simply provide ROM numbers 1-5. This makes the board rather less useful than the old seven-socket Superpower board, and £1 more expensive. AA#10
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