mmruzek
Experienced Member
Hello, I recently purchased some solid state disk cards on EBAY called "PROMDISK III" made by Micro Computer Specialists. These cards emulate drives by using solid state memory IC's. A photo of one of the cards is attached. Installing a card in an IBM PC5150 the computer boots to DOS using the card. The company is still in business and they have a support page here: http://www.icpamerica.com/mcsi1/support.htm
The support page has a manual that is for the PROMDISK IV (which is one version newer), and the detailed information looks about 95% applicable. The software support file from MCSI is also for the PROMDISK IV and is a self-unpacking file made using PKLITE and is password protected. I can view the contents of the file using a HEX Editor and also using WINZIP, but I can't extract anything. I have written to MCSI asking for the password... I also did a web search for a few of the unique filenames in the packed file hoping for hits, but found nothing.
While searching for more information I found this website that describes analyzing the file structure on the PROMDISK. It makes for interesting reading, and would be an avenue to create a disk image using hex cut and paste. http://dankohn.info/projects/promdisk.html
I'm wondering if anyone might have the software tools for working with these cards? Alternately, possibly some other suggestions for things to try? My eventual goal would be to create a solid state disk that boots to the MTCP applications.
The support page has a manual that is for the PROMDISK IV (which is one version newer), and the detailed information looks about 95% applicable. The software support file from MCSI is also for the PROMDISK IV and is a self-unpacking file made using PKLITE and is password protected. I can view the contents of the file using a HEX Editor and also using WINZIP, but I can't extract anything. I have written to MCSI asking for the password... I also did a web search for a few of the unique filenames in the packed file hoping for hits, but found nothing.
While searching for more information I found this website that describes analyzing the file structure on the PROMDISK. It makes for interesting reading, and would be an avenue to create a disk image using hex cut and paste. http://dankohn.info/projects/promdisk.html
I'm wondering if anyone might have the software tools for working with these cards? Alternately, possibly some other suggestions for things to try? My eventual goal would be to create a solid state disk that boots to the MTCP applications.