Gigaah wrote:

The computers in question are used for industrial control...but I know where to find the people who REALLY know this hardware..gamers.

Uh, the hardware needs of gamers likely diverge significantly from those who work in industrial control. DOSBox, for instance, tends to be entirely adequate for gamers. It's kind of tempting to suggest you give it a try anyway, but it may well cause far more problems than it would solve.

I don't care to build these things from vintage, used parts.

I think you've come to the wrong place. 🤣

Speed: these systems have had functions added etc and the existing 486's seem to struggle a bit and can get bogged down. Not sure if its disk operations,bus side, or just the IO data to/from the ports having to wait for....unknown.

This is probably something you should figure out before deciding what hardware you need, I would think.

Ideally Flash storage to eliminate HDD failure issues. External access to it would aleviate frustrations getting data in/out of them for backup.

An IDE-to-Compact Flash or SD adapter might do the trick.

Dialup modem needed for occasional use but normally not used.

Can you go into more detail here?

Video is all text except for some programs use PCX or PIC image background and display text over that. Color mind you.

It would be hard to find hardware that can't do that.

Ease of finding a replacment again in the future(or cheap backup replacments now).

It's not going to get any easier. Why not try to modernize now?

If you need ISA slots then going for new old stock ATX Socket 7 boards with Intel 430 chipsets might be an idea. Those boards fit in modern cases with better cooling solutions than AT boards/cases. Installing a Pentium or AMD underclocked to 75mhz will give very little heat and also keep speed about the same as your current 486's, but also giving some extra juice in performance. SD-RAM can also be placed in those boards, which is much easier to get hold of.

BIOS'es and motherboards on Socket 7 are much easier to work on, and it is also easier to install newer hardware in the PCI slots. IDE to CF adapter as HDD will work fine, or you could buy a cheap SSD drive with a S-ATA PCI controller. There is a reason why the general consensus here on Vogons say that a Socket 7 ATX board is the most versatile, but also stable machine you can build for old retro gaming purposes, while the same time being cheap and available. Many of those attributes apply for the things you are looking for.

If Jorpho is right and I picked the wrong place I appologize. I just picked the forum I found with what seemed to be the most concise postings thus far on answering questions I had.

Maybe I was over complicating things for myself. Maybe I confused architecture compatability between pentium and 486 the wrong direction and the only pentium cpu issue is potentially just clock/bus speed?

You can buy 486dx/sx 50/66/100/133+ single board computers brand new with out a problem. Some complete all in one video,usb, ami bios, serial,parallel ports network the whole 9 yards. As Mentioned earlier the company that makes the Vortex86DX(also SX and MX) can run clocks up to 1ghz on these 486's they make passive cooling at 5-10watts full tilt. With support cycle past the year 2017. Not worried about form factor, they always make some sort of enclosure or I can always get legacy enclosures locally...not a problem. Almost want to get one to underclock it and bench mark it clock for clock againts the old 486/pentiums.

As for "why not just upgrade now". Yeah, the software running the show..while it is Actually really good. Is designed pre-pentium. Completly getting rid of it either costs a sh!t load of money to have someone install a new system and rely on them or leave me with a Huuuuge project reverse engineering the whole system so the servo controllers and plc's don't have to be replaced$$. Doxbox interests me...but you know thats just one more layer of software to go wrong and have issues with so I'm leary about it.

Vintage tech..yes...vintage(used) hardware i'm not keen on. New old stock cpu/mobo is ok..but sketchy if you keeping an eye on the future unless buying say a full 2nd unit for each machine for spare is economical...which is why i was eyeing the single board computers seeing as production still exists in some cases. The more clock unlock the mobo is the better..as long as compatability to the older dos stuff doesn't suffer...

If a faster pentium architecturaly is effectivly not a problem with only bus and processor speed hamg ups that route is an option as long as I can under clock it in a way that won't inadvertantly cause lags or hiccups in the Input/Output of serial ports.

Fax modem is just used for occasional remote control operations with pc anywhere
The Analog digital card I need to use I can get ISA or PCI so either will do.

I'm not sure we have a subforum here for talking NEW PC hardware, to be honest. There doesn't seem to be much interest in it here.

Perhaps Milliways, our subforum for misc. topics. If you guys want, we can move it there.

Technically Marvin is for talking about OLD PC hardware and retro PCs. I don't think a retro PC is what you're talking about, rather a NEW PC that is compatible with a retro PC, unless I'm mistaken?

Here's a recent thread talking about how our subforums are confusing (people just don't read the descriptions on the main page...) and how Marvin was kinda an afterthought added for the hardware collectors (who we love).
Vogons: confusing sub-forums

Signed,
Stiletto
(Founding) Member, ID #8 (registered 2002-7-01) and Moderator.

If retro/vintage is explicitly felt by this group as "the real deal" date stamped from the given era vs identical hardware production far past general use..then i'm obviously out of place and I appologize. i'm merely trying to hammer out exact details of the vintage equipment tomale the best descision for its replacment with ideally identical hardware but more currently produced or copies reformulated.

I now understand I dropped a pretty off base series of questions for your group. I still hoped someone would have the technical knowledge of the vintage hardware and software to clear up the software/hardware interaction questions. I appologize for the confusion, I'll let this topic die and run it elsewhere.

Don't think I don't appreciate vintage hardware. I have a beautiful pristine white and gold intel 4004 cpu and a 80086 cpu I had put into glass cases. important technology? yes..but also amazing beautiful.

please ignore the nay-sayers, I think most of your problem is software. windows 98 is a big cut-off for old vs new software. This is because in 2000, windows will NOT allow programs to directly talk to hardware. Naturally there are ways around this, but in all practicality, software had to be re-written.

That said, if you can find the correct software for 2000/xp then getting a replacement computer is as easy as buying a junker from a local shop. If you are stuck with dos, then you are limited to 'vintage' hardware.

If I was you? go find a junker box at a thrift store. look for a pentium 2 or 3. And go from there. Processors newer than pentium 3 MAY WORK but you will find they lack ISA slots, com ports, etc. If you find a celeron P3 these things run very low power. IDE to CF cards are cheap and easy to get. plus if you can use a newer computer to backup the work computer.

I would be happy to help further in private message or email.

Gigaah wrote:

You can buy 486dx/sx 50/66/100/133+ single board computers brand new with out a problem. Some complete all in one video,usb, ami bios, serial,parallel ports network the whole 9 yards. As Mentioned earlier the company that makes the Vortex86DX(also SX and MX) can run clocks up to 1ghz on these 486's they make passive cooling at 5-10watts full tilt. With support cycle past the year 2017. Not worried about form factor, they always make some sort of enclosure or I can always get legacy enclosures locally...not a problem. Almost want to get one to underclock it and bench mark it clock for clock againts the old 486/pentiums.

You seem pretty enthusiastic about these. If they meet your needs, why not just go for it? I can't see any particular disadvantage from the way you describe them. Support for old serial and parallel ports can sometimes be spotty on newer systems, in particular. That's one thing I can definitely warn you about – don't rely on USB-to-serial or USB-to-parallel adapters for anything even slightly complicated.

As for "why not just upgrade now". Yeah, the software running the show..while it is Actually really good. Is designed pre-pentium. Completly getting rid of it either costs a sh!t load of money to have someone install a new system and rely on them or leave me with a Huuuuge project reverse engineering the whole system so the servo controllers and plc's don't have to be replaced$$.

You can't possibly be the only ones working with these servos and plc's. What solutions have other people in industrial control used? (I don't think anyone here would know.)

The Vortex86 is based on a Rise mP6 design which is more similar to a Pentium MMX than a 486. It should significantly outperform a 486 even at the same clock.
The faster versions have integrated L2 cache and use DDR2 RAM.
Hard to say if these are any use for you. You'll probably have to experiment.

Thanks all. I'm pretty confident between what you provided and what I've dug up on what route to go. Feeling I'm not tied to a 486 or sub p133 as long as proper underclocking of bus and cpu it makes starting a lot easier. Aside from the standard single board computers I've found. I've also found that currently produced "Thin Clients" are mostly i586 i686 computers shoved into a micro atx enclosure and even have(if you get another enclosure) pci expansion w/ mutliple serial and parallel ports consuming 2-8 watts. Going to try to find some that have drivers for the extra "goodies"(usb etc) for dos or at least win95.