HDM doesn't work completely. This is the deal. You install this circuit board with a flash card slot into your keyboard. You get a switch to change between the floppy drive and the partitions on the flash card. The flash card gets divided in 1.5mb partitions. My 128mb flash card gives me 81 partitions to play with.

Then you get a cable (Parallel to mini din 6) to attach the device to your computer. Unfortunately, the software doesn't work. There are good instructions in English. The problem is when you press the CONNECT button, instead of accessing the drives on the keyboard, you get a message: NO cable or port LPT1. That means that no connection is being made. Either there is a problem with the cable, my XP computer software is too advanced, or there is a problem with the device itself.

So I figured, there are more than one ways to skin a cat. While I wait for technical support from the Ukraine, I can copy styles from floppies into USER memory and then copy those onto the partitions. Here is the problem: Whenever you scroll to a new partition, you get a message asking if you want to format the drive. With 80% of the drives, the keyboard gives a message: WRITE PROTECTED. 20% of the drives do work. Another problem is that these working partitions are randomly scattered throughout the flash disk. Partitions 7, 11, 14, 20, 23, 27 work while the other partitions don't. I tried another flash card and I had the same exact problem.

Now I have a gut feeling that if I can get the software to work that the computer can format these partitions, but I'm not positive. If I cannot get the software to work, I might send a flash card to the Ukraine and ask the seller to format the partitions that won't work.

Very frustrating indeed.

So outside of the many problems, how does the item perform? It is very fast scrolling between partitions with the switcher. Once you get to a partition where you have some styles stored, it is just like a floppy drive. It takes a few seconds to access and it takes the same amount of time to load a style: 2-4 seconds (I timed it). It is a lot easier to scroll to a different number while playing the keyboard than it is to change floppies while performing.

We'll see. The problem might be very simple. I'm waiting for a reply from the seller. The contraption might work fine on an older computer (like the one the Ukrainian probably has). It is doubtful that the cable is at fault.

Maybe the device is a dog. Even as it is, it is slightly superior to floppies, but not superior enough to justify $217 including money transfer. I have feeling that we'll be able to get this to work somehow.

Beakybird