DOS Palmtops: Tidalwave (and Clones) tools and tips

Tidalwave PS-1000 (and Clones) Tools and Tips

Until recently I claimed that the Tidalwave and its clones can't boot another OS nor use flash memory.
Today I present you tools and solutions that make this come untrue and expand the possibilities of these cool little machines.
Kudos go out to dreNorteR from VCFed Forums.

So here are the game changing insights we learned:

Booting from another card

The Volume label: Name your card "$$#%@LITEON". This is a magic volume label that tells the firmware to run whatever code is in the boot sector of the card instead of loading ROM-DOS.

The Keyboard shortcut: hold Alt+Shift during boot to get to a menu. This won't allow booting from a card but it allows loading startup files - so you can skip loading drivers that take precious memory.

The CF Driver: dreNorteR made some cool CF drivers that enable you to use much cheaper and larger CF cards instead of the expensive SRAM cards.
Note that with the latest driver CF runs smooth but WARNING: It does consume power on standby, so it will suck a full pack of AA empty in like 24 hours.
WARNING: I broke one of my paltops trying to insert a Type II adaptor into the TYPE I slot of a tidalwave. They ARE thicker, so if you can't file it down slim enough be VERY careful.
So either remove the CF card when going to standby or live with it...

So here somes the driver:

Tidalcf2.zip - latest CF Driver with format tool

And just for reference the older drivers (Don't use unless you have a good reason!).

Tidalcf1.zip - Previous CF driver, no format tool

twcfhack.zip - Second driver made

Tidalcf1.zip - Very first CF driver, may be buggy