Using A Single Floppy Disk Drive; Using A Hard Disk Drive - Epson Equity I User Manual

Using a Single Floppy Disk Drive

Some versions of the Equity have only one floppy disk drive. There
is a DIP switch (switch SW1-8) under the flap beneath the disk drives
which tells the computer how many floppy disk drives you have. This
switch should be DOWN (OFF) if you have two drives or UP (ON) if you
have just one drive. If you have only one floppy disk drive, make sure
this switch is UP correctly so the operating system can help you perform
those operations that normally require two drives.
Operating systems usually expect the computer to have at least two
physical disk drives. MS-DOS recognizes drives A and B for two floppy
disk drives, or A and C for a floppy and a hard disk drive. Some opera-
tions, such as copying files from one disk to another, require two drives.
With MS-DOS, if you have only one physical disk drive, the operating
system lets you treat it logically as two drives.
For example, if you give a command to copy from drive A to drive
B, MS-DOS copies from the first disk you place in the drive (A) to the
computer's memory. Then it prompts you to insert the disk for drive B. It
copies from memory to the B disk you place in the drive. When the copy
is complete, the screen prompts you to reinsert the disk for drive A.
You may be swapping disks this way quite often, and it is easy to
forget which disk is which. To avoid accidentally losing your data, here
is a tip for keeping the disks straight: always hold the disk for the A drive
in your left hand and the disk for the B drive in your right. Another way
to avoid writing on the wrong disk is to place a write-protect tab on your
source disk. This allows you to read information, but not write over it.
For more information on using a single floppy disk drive with
MS-DOS, see your MS-DOS manual.

Using a Hard Disk Drive

The internal hard disk which comes with certain configurations of
the Epson Equity has a capacity of 20 megabytes-about 20 million char-
acters. This is equivalent to around 60 floppy disks. Using the hard disk
greatly reduces the number of floppy disks you need and eliminates
much of the disk-swapping you have to do. You can do almost all your
work on the hard disk and copy your files to floppy disks as needed (to
make backups, for example).
29