Features and limitations

The following features are available in the latest version of the +3e ROMs:

• All known hard-disk/compactflash/SD/MMC interfaces for the Spectrum are supported
• Easy-to-use +3 BASIC extensions for managing hard disks
• +3 BASIC treats hard disk partitions identically to floppy disks
• Almost all existing +3DOS-compliant software will work with the hard disk
• Up to 65536 partitions can be created on each hard disk
• Disk geometry is automatically detected, even for the simple 8-bit interface!
• No need to reboot after FORMATting hard disks, or creating/deleting partitions
• Any drive letter (including A:) can be mapped to a hard disk partition
• Any drive can be made the default drive
• Floppy drives and the RAMdisk can be mapped to any letter (eg swap drives A: and B:)
• Drive mappings survive the NEW command
• All drive assignments can be made permanent, so they are automatically set up when you turn the +3e on (also applies to default drive and Editor/BASIC colour schemes)
• Permanent settings can be bypassed on boot by holding down the CAPS SHIFT key
• 48K and 128K .Z80/.SNA snapshots available from the internet can be loaded with the SPECTRUM command
• Streams can be opened to disk files in input, output or update modes
• Streams can be opened to regions of memory in input/output mode
• Streams can be opened to character arrays in input/output mode
• Streams can be opened to text windows in output-only mode
• Text windows support 48 different character size combinations, user-defined character sets, 3 justify modes, save/restore of window contents and much more
• Commands are available to get and set filepointers and get filesizes
• Command equivalent to INKEY$ is available for any stream with input capability
• Full IDEDOS API is available for machine-code programmers, giving access to all the new +3e features

If using the system with the simple 8-bit interface (rather than one of the 16-bit hard-disk or compactflash interfaces), the following limitations also apply:

• Formatted hard disk capacity is half nominal
• CD-ROMs and other ATAPI devices cannot be supported

The current software release also has the following flaws and limitations, which may be resolved in later versions:

• Maximum partition size of 16Mb (+3DOS would allow 32Mb max)
• Only two hard-disk partitions can be mapped to drives at the same time
• No support for CP/M with hard disks
• INPUT # command doesn't yet work correctly with file channels (although this can be simulated using the NEXT # command)
• Multiface 3 can only save snapshots to floppy disks. Other snapshot devices (eg RamJet) will have the same limitation, or may be incompatible.

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