DOS 6.22 and direct Hardware support.

[Albion]

I have a bunch of 10 year old Bridgeport CNC Machine tools here in my shop. Their control is a 16bit ISA controller board that runs off a standard Pentium motherboard. the software is DOS based and needs to communicate directly with the 16bit card. Unfortunately Bridgeport is no longer in existence in a capacity where they're willing to help me.

I've been replacing hardware when it goes bad, hard drives, motherboards, RAM, etc... But I am finding it more and more difficult to find and keep working used hardware that works together. Ever try installing an 80gig drive in a Pentium 233 MMX motherboard? Not to mention the parts I am finding are starting to become more and more expensive.

I've reciently found some Core2Duo boards that have an ISA slot. Unfortunately I still have issues making DOS communicate with Server 2008.

I was wondering if I could run a copy of VMWare workstation inside of XP on those controls. Will VMWare workstation allow me some sort of direct communication with the 16bit ISA controller board?

If not, does anyone have any ideas? The sad part is that these machines are only 10 years out of a 40 year life span. It's like purchasing a new car then finding out 3 years later that the CPU is no longer supported and you're out of luck as far as a tune up goes.

Thanks!

 

[biglebowski]

We use 20 slot ISA/pci backplanes with a PCI SBC (single board computer) for our recorders. Our new ones now use only PCI but the manufacturer still produces the ISA ones as many of the other recording companies are still using ISA. I know this sbc will run both dos and rmx without any issues but don't know if your app can control multiple cards.

Backplane

SBC

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months