Products > Test Equipment
please dont purchase PC controlled test equipment
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Kleinstein:
It depends on the equipment. The 2 parts (DSO and AWG) from the start of the thread are testequipment with a rather short time value.  It was clear from the start that they loose much of there value over a relatively short time because better and cheaper parts come out. With such units that a evolving fast, there is not much value in a 3 year old unit - just like with PCs - there value was going down quite fast in the 1990s. So when you need to change the PC you don't loose the expensive instrument it one was, but something outdated with very limited value. A similar old stand alone DSO would also be obsolete and in many cases go to the waste - maybe a few years later, but not by much.  Having it PC controlled saves on the HW costs to start with  - so overlall not such a bad solution.

The PC control can be a problem for other, more longer lived instruments. The typical solution is to keep an old PC and maybe even an extra reseve one. I remember using an old original IBM PC-XT for such an old, but still OK scientific instrument in 2003. It just got a bit tricky to transfer and backup data. We somehow manged to move it to a newer (AFAIR 486) machine that still had an ISA bus. IFAIK it was than running some DOS 5.0 or similar.

Dedicated computers as part of instruments are often worse, as it gets even more tricky to get spares or documentation. If really needed one could still get a standard PC from the 1980s, as there were quite a lot of them around and compatibilty was reasonable. With a custom VME bus 68K system things get way more tricky.
m k:

--- Quote from: TomKatt on March 03, 2023, 11:08:28 am ---oddball custom 386 base pc with MS Mobile Embedded in ROM on the board.

--- End quote ---

Was the ROM embedded into something else?

Code emulation is the next step, for generic cases, special ones are special ones.
DOS and 16bit Windows code can be emulated today without any problems.
The generic problem is obsolete hardware that is controlled directly by the software using I/O commands.

Some motherboards without ISA slots are still ISA, there PS/2 connectors are not enough but serial and/or parallel port is pretty close.
You can also add a PCI to ISA bridge card and have your hardware supported but old software is still locked.
There you possibly have a completely supported environment but new bridge driver and running emulator may not compute.

Final answer is Linux, its DOS emulator can support those I/O commands.
There are still cli/sti style stuff but I've heard the system works.

Not so long ago I bumped into INT 34h and the likes of Turbo C, it's a DOS era x87 emulation system.
There supporting compiler generates a code that will be replaced in case of actual x87 being present, means that first round is slow but interrupt modify its presence away and then from that on the actual x87 command is executed.

Modifying I/O commands is trickier since they are native, short and not meant to be anything else, so replacement is not an option.
But nowadays exceptions are generated, there program execution is completely rerouted so problem solved.
Until it's not, that exception must be handled and that handler is not very usually working, if even implemented.
M$ case is clear, old software is not fully supported.

Are GDI printers still around?
artag:

--- Quote from: zrq on March 02, 2023, 10:36:19 pm ---Still being proud of how I hacked HP 53305A (29 years old Win16 software)to work half-natively on my 2022 computer and modern GPIB adapters, I'd like to take the challenge of preserving headless PC controlled test equipment.

--- End quote ---

That sounds useful. I've run it on an old laptop but I don't really want to preserve it for just that. I'd really rather run it in wine etc. as I don't even want to run recent windows, but I'm sure documenting what you did would be of interest and not just to mel.
zrq:

--- Quote from: artag on March 03, 2023, 04:30:44 pm ---
--- Quote from: zrq on March 02, 2023, 10:36:19 pm ---Still being proud of how I hacked HP 53305A (29 years old Win16 software)to work half-natively on my 2022 computer and modern GPIB adapters, I'd like to take the challenge of preserving headless PC controlled test equipment.

--- End quote ---

That sounds useful. I've run it on an old laptop but I don't really want to preserve it for just that. I'd really rather run it in wine etc. as I don't even want to run recent windows, but I'm sure documenting what you did would be of interest and not just to mel.

--- End quote ---

I have a post for that https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/using-hp-53305a-phase-analyzer-software-on-modern-windows/msg4466365/#msg4466365 . Please use the DLL burried in the source code zip and ignore the attachment in the main post, I recall I fixed some bugs.

Wine is more complicated...You may be lucky and make another layer of shim then it works, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39574355/is-it-possible-to-call-native-linux-api-from-a-windows-application-running-in-wi , or it's completely impossible, I haven't look deep into it so I don't know.

Wait.. didn't you already replied to that thread half year ago??  ;)
james_s:

--- Quote from: TomKatt on March 03, 2023, 11:08:28 am ---Yes, we did.  While we also have equipment using industrial pc hardware like you describe, this unit was some oddball custom 386 base pc with MS Mobile Embedded in ROM on the board.  We even sent it out to a repair shop that claimed they could repair it (they have done many other repairs for us) and they couldn't resolve it either.  I'm sure from a technical pov it wouldn't be too hard to replace it with some generic pc system as the actual IO is run by PLC's in the cabinet, but apparently the manufacturer did not have any generic software that would interface with the PLC system as that software was all in the ROM.  So their solution was $40K+ to replace everything when the saw went for around $60K on the used market.

--- End quote ---

Well that's annoying. It illustrates the issue with equipment that should last many decades relying on computer technology that becomes obsolete after just a few years.
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