Portfolio Card Drive Drivers and Software

[+joeatari]

I have been hoping to work on a project to use a Portfolio card drive with the "Book 8088" laptop, which has an ISA card slot add-on.  I have always wanted to try the card drive, but I didn't have a PC with ISA slots since many, many years ago.  Now I do with this little Book 8088!  I finally found a really nice, complete Portfolio card drive, but now I cannot find my PC USB floppy so that I can access the drivers.  I have been looking for the CD.SYS driver for the card drive all over the internet but I cannot find it.  Can someone upload it here?  Thank you!

[+joeatari]

Oh, good grief!  I have Atari computers that can read the PC floppy disks!  Sometimes I just don't think straight! I have uploaded the files that come with the Atari Portfolio PC Card drive.  I'll add additional content to this post to update about this project. 

CD.SYS CFX.COM

[+joeatari]

This project worked right out of the box as they say.

 

1. I copied CD.SYS to the SYSTEM directory on the Book 8088.

2. I edited the config.sys on the Book 8088 to include device=c:\system\cd.sys

3. Rebooted the book 8088.

4. The card drive was assigned as drive E: (I use a USB stick as drive D:)

 

My test was to insert the Portfolio File Manager card and read it.  When typing the DIR command, the light on the card drive blinks and the contents of the card is displayed.  I have not tried to write to a card at this point.

 

This beautiful card drive came from a recent eBay purchase that was to include a "new in box" Atari Portfolio and PC card drive.  I do believe the card drive was new in box.  Unfortunately, the Portfolio has broken latches and it had corroded "Kirkland" (Costco) batteries inside, so I would imagine the batteries weren't nearly as old as the Portfolio.  The Portfolio was inside what seemed to be a sealed original box.  So far, the Portfolio does not boot.  If the seller was honest, then they were "taken" by someone else.  Fortunately, I have a couple of working Atari Portfolio computers in my collection.  I'm happy because I got the working card drive, a 64k memory card, all the original beautiful boxes and manuals, and even a PBASE card and manual with this lot.

 

[bttr]

The PC Card Drive Utility disk is also available from https://archive.org/details/pofo_mc

 

Is your disk still original (= unmodified)?

If yes, would you mind to create a disk image from?

Then I could upload to archive.org for preservation.

 

[+joeatari]

13 hours ago, bttr said:

The PC Card Drive Utility disk is also available from https://archive.org/details/pofo_mc

 

Is your disk still original (= unmodified)?

If yes, would you mind to create a disk image from?

Then I could upload to archive.org for preservation.

 

Yes, my disk is original.  Is there a way to create a disk image on my Atari Falcon?

[Cyprian]

On 4/20/2024 at 8:09 AM, joeatari said:

nice setup

[bttr]

On 4/21/2024 at 8:01 AM, joeatari said:

Yes, my disk is original.  Is there a way to create a disk image on my Atari Falcon?

I have no idea. Maybe you can get your hands on a USB floppy drive and connect it a (Windows) computer.

 

[gilsaluki]

This might be a solution on how to xfer files from The Port to my PC.  Never have done it yet.  I still have an in the box card drive with the ISA card.  Never used.

 

[gilsaluki]

apfRAM.com    

       has anyone tried these?

 

 

[Cyprian]

On 5/28/2024 at 2:55 AM, gilsaluki said:

apfRAM.com    

       has anyone tried these?

 

 

not yet:

 

[towmater]

I have the card drive in a PIII computer, but only just now thought of asking if there is a crossdev system for the Portfolio? I'd like to try some IO stuff.