Author Topic: Installing Prominaire Designer  (Read 6511 times)

Mike La Martina

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Installing Prominaire Designer
« on: April 28, 2021, 08:52:54 pm »
I own a copy of Prominaire Designer Version 5.c.  It comes on 3.5 inch disks.  Over the years I have lost the disks.  I do have a directory tree that contains a working copy of the installed product.
I also have a directory that contains the content of the install disks.

Restoring the working directory does not work as expected.  So I tried to  run the install program from its resident directory.  When I do this, the installer wants to read its filed from the A: drive.

Is there a way to make the installer work properly?

Pete

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Re: Installing Prominaire Designer
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2021, 12:51:18 am »
Hi Mike

Never used or installed PD but wondering if any config.sys file entries are required - in LibPath maybe - to get the installed version working...

What happens when you try to start the app from a command line?


Regards

Pete

ivan

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Re: Installing Prominaire Designer
« Reply #2 on: April 29, 2021, 01:32:59 am »
Hi Mike,

Like Pete I don't know the program but I suspect your problem is down to missing DLLs that the installer put in the os2\dll directory.

Am I correct in assuming you don't have a floppy drive so you can't install from the floppies, if so, all is not lost.  You can download vfdisk60.zip from hobbes which will give you a virtual floppy disk that you can copy the contents of each floppy to from each of your install directory, and use that to do the install.

If you have each floppy as a disk image you will need to unpack them to the virtual floppy.  The easiest way to do that is to use EMT4PM from Daniel F Valot's site http://dvalot.free.fr/OS2programs.html  that program will also make disk images.


David Graser

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Re: Installing Prominaire Designer
« Reply #3 on: April 29, 2021, 05:34:33 am »
You might try a virtual floppy.  I was unable to install WP Security because it was looking for a floppy drive.  I installed vfdisk 6.0 and did the install again.  It installed. So I always install vfdisk so I can install this program.  Something to try.  I did not have to put the program on the virtual disk.  The installation program just had to find it.

https://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/system/drivers/filesys/vfdisk60.zip

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Installing Prominaire Designer
« Reply #4 on: April 29, 2021, 03:42:47 pm »
Hi

I wish I could contact Matt Smith from Prominare, to request his software to turn open source or at least AS IS Freeware.
But Matt Smith is also the name of a Dr. Who actor, which make it harder to find him on online.

Regards.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2021, 03:55:24 pm by Martin Iturbide »
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Mike La Martina

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Re: Installing Prominaire Designer
« Reply #5 on: April 29, 2021, 05:21:21 pm »
Thanks for the ideas.
I have a 3.5" floppy drive, its the disks I don't have.
Good Luck finding Matt Smith.  He was very helpful when I spoke with him, in the 1990's.

Steven Levine

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Re: Installing Prominaire Designer
« Reply #6 on: April 29, 2021, 09:49:09 pm »
If I had this problem, I would install vfdisk and copy files to the vfdisk and install from there.  This would allow you mix and match files until you get the files onto the correct correct diskette.  I suspect if I had the set of files you are working with, I could find the control files for the installer which would speed up the process.

Lars

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Re: Installing Prominaire Designer
« Reply #7 on: April 30, 2021, 08:20:27 am »
VFDISK will pick the next free drive letter in the "reserved" range to support it's virtual floppy unit.
That is, it would normally not support drive letter A.
The question is, if the installer insists on drive letter A or if it insists on installing from removable media looking like a floppy. The latter will work with VFDISK.
Unless you recreate the floppies (I guess that is what Steve suggests) and get yourself a USB floppy drive (which DOES use drive letter A or it can be told to do so).
« Last Edit: April 30, 2021, 08:25:32 am by Lars »

Olafur Gunnlaugsson

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Re: Installing Prominaire Designer
« Reply #8 on: April 30, 2021, 11:44:53 am »
You can try downloading the demo version, from the publishers old web page on the Internet Archive if it is not on one of the FTP sites, install it and then installing your archive over that.

Mike La Martina

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Re: Installing Prominaire Designer
« Reply #9 on: May 01, 2021, 10:39:19 pm »
Thanks to Olafur Gunnlaugsson for the idea of using the demo version.
I installed it and in the install directory is a file named PDS.INI.  Inspection with the FM/2 Ini editor and it had and entry that names the install directory.

I edited PDS.INI in my Prominaire directory to name the Prominaire directory.

My testing shows that everything works as expected. 
Designer is a powerful development tool.  A less powerful resource editor is URE.

I am slowly rebuilding my OS/2 development environments.

Thanks  to all for any attention you may have given this matter,