Can anyone identify this PC card?

[jdas]

Hi All
We have windows 98 computer to control the old machine (noble gas mass spectrometer, NGMS) using two ISA cards. One of the card doesn't have any manufacturer info and the company from whom we bought the NGMS is dead, so no support. I am uploading the pictures of this card in hope that someone has ability to find out more about this card.
This card is connected with an ion counter that is attached to the NGMS.
Thank you in advance.

[Ian.M]

An 8 bit ISA card manufactured early to mid '99?  - no wonder the company has gone the way of the buggy whip manufacturers. It looks like it was designed in someone's garage mid '80s.
 
Its an entirely custom interface card with a 80C31 (MCS51 family) microcontroller that presumably runs all the realtime I/O (something that unaided Windows PCs are notoriously bad at).  If you have someone who *really* knows what they are doing with old embedded stuff, have them pull the EPROM (IC29) and get a dump of it.  If you are lucky there may be copyright strings in it that could lead you back to the OEM.

However I strongly suspect you are S.O.L.  - if the host PC's died you haven't got a snowflake's chance in hell of resurrecting it - Late versions of Win9x family OSes could be very fussy if you changed the motherboard or key hardware like the graphics card, so even if you source an industrial motherboard that has a couple of ISA slots your chances of getting it running without the full set of original instal media are minimal. Similarly with a hard drive failure, you are FUBARed unless you have all the media or know someone who can provide an image from the drive of their own identical machine. If its the card or attached ion counter that's faulty, you'd need the active cooperation of a really good tech with a working unit of the same system who's prepared to run your card against known good hardware and software, putting time and money into helping you trace the fault on your unit. Its the rare Windows based Scope or testgear problem on steroids since mass spectrometers are even more of a niche market than high end test gear.

Its a long shot, but you may get lucky if a tech who's worked with this card reads this topic,  but If I was desperate, I'd take *MUCH* better photos (sharp, hi-rez, all chip markings in focus) of both sides of the board and a closeup of the circular connector aand enquire if http://www.bunniestudios.com/ would be willing to post it for identification in their regular 'Name that Ware' competition, or at least let you appeal to the experts at IDing old and obscure hardware amoungst their readers.

[nctnico]

Isn't there a manufacturer nameplate on the NGMS?
And what is the problem? Are you trying to find spare parts in case the machine breaks down or is there a problem already?