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PROMDISK III Disk Emulator ISA PC XT Card

mmruzek

Experienced Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2011
Messages
226
Location
Michigan, USA
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.

promdisk.jpg
 
I've been working with these PROMDISK cards, and am now able to make them bootable and load software applications. I am configuring one of these cards to emulate a bootable "A:" drive by loading complete DOS 3.3 That will allow me to put this card into any bare 5150 motherboard for booting/testing, setting up a hard disk, etc. (Another possibility is to create a bootable "C:" drive emulator) After loading the operating system and files I will have about 400 KB of space left... Therefore I might as well use the space to make this 'Utility Card' as useful as possible. I am wondering if anyone has some suggestions for applications to load into the remaining space... I was thinking a word processor and maybe a hard drive analysis program. Does anyone have any other ideas for small and useful programs? Thanks! Michael
 
The site ipcamerica.com does not work. I believe the company is defunct. Can anyone hook me up with the software for promdisk IV?
 
I'm always interested in nice hardware so I did some Googling for the software but... nothing. While I was searching I was thinking about creating similar hardware but then the thought occurred: what can this card do what the XTIDE CF version cannot? To be honest, I can't think of anything so soon. And the advantage of XTIDE: _much_ more disk capacity.

But still being curious, I did some searching for other equivalents but only found ROM versions like RayeR's ROMOS. Wikipedia's ROM-DOS page was very informative (now I know that my Philips' !Yes needs DOS Plus) but no pointers to real software, or better, sources. And don't be fooled by the word "ROM", replace the (EP)ROM with a EEPPROM/FlashRAM or battery backed up RAM, and you are half way a bootable RAM-disk.

So, again out of curiosity, any pointers to equivalent hardware, software and mainly source code are welcome. TIA!
 
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