A NOR emulating memory device has a memory controller with a first bus for receiving a NOR command signal, and for servicing a read operation from a desired address in a NOR memory. The memory controller has a second bus for communicating with a NAND memory in a NAND memory protocol, and a third bus for communicating with a RAM memory. A NAND memory is connected to the second bus. The NAND memory has an array of memory cells divided into a plurality of pages with each page divided into a plurality of sectors, with each sector having a plurality of bits. The NAND memory further has a page buffer for storing a page of bits read from the array during the read operation of the NAND memory. A RAM memory is connected to the third bus. The memory controller has a NOR memory for storing program code for initiating the operation of the memory controller, and for receiving NOR commands from the first bus and issuing NAND protocol commands on the second bus, in response thereto, to emulate the operation of a NOR memory device. The program code causes the memory controller to read a first sector of bits from the page buffer of the NAND memory and to write the sector of bits into the RAM memory, wherein the first sector contains the location of the desired address, and supplying data from said RAM memory in response to the read operation.