This is sort-of-but-not-quite obliquely off-topic, but I still can't
think of a better place to ask.

I cannot be the only one here with a need to keep an obsolete
development environment running. In my case, this requires a Windows PC
with a legacy ISA-bus parallel port and the ability to run 286-mode
Windows executable programs (.EXE and .DLL).

This requirement stems from a need run a specific debugging package for
a PowerPC microcontroller with a BDM/JTAG port which is interfaced to
said parallel port.

We used to have two benchtop systems supporting this configuration. One
is Windows 2000 PC, which has amazingly managed to stay alive for more
than 25 years, with only occasional replacements of a mini-ATX power
supply. The other one had several heart transplants and its software
over the years crept from Windows 98 to Windows Vista, Windows XP and eventually Windows 7.
But when the motherboard gave up the ghost a few months ago,
I found myself unable to find a viable replacement. While I did find two
Compaq desktops of appropriate age, which came with Vista installed,
there were some driver problems that made the parallel port not work
quite right with the debugger DLLs. (And also the chassis is in bad
shape, and Compaq always had chassis that had "clever" mechanical
solutions that were incompatible with generic components.)

Does anyone have good hints for how to source hardware that will be
likely to work?

I think it is likely that a clean install of 32-bit Windows 7 can work,
so long as the hardware is vanilla enough. I think WinXP is almost
guaranteed to work, especially if I can find a disk with a service pack incorporated.

I look forward to hearing from fellow cave-dwellers.

--
Lars Poulsen

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On 2025-03-28 18:47, Lars Poulsen wrote:

....

Does anyone have good hints for how to source hardware that will be
likely to work?

In the past, I used industrial PCs. Ie, machines hardened in order to be
used in industries, machine shops, etc. A chasis that would stand a
truck passing over it. They are pretty expensive, so they use ancient pc boards.

I can not suggest a provider, it is long time since I do this.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: ---:- FTN<->UseNet Gate -:--- (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On Fri, 28 Mar 2025 11:40:52 -0700, Peter Flass wrote:

In my opinion [Windows] XP is a great improvement over all its
successors.

That represented the dumbing-down of Windows NT for the consumer market. Remember how Windows NT was supposed to be this secure, multi-user OS? All that was chucked away to make it more attractive to ordinary users.

Remember how bad the security holes were? XP SP2 helped somewhat, at the
cost of breaking lots of software that had grown accustomed to the laissez-faire environment. Then Vista had to introduce this new feature, “User Account Control”, to make up for the broken security features, supposedly inherited from NT, that no longer worked.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Lars Poulsen wrote:

This is sort-of-but-not-quite obliquely off-topic, but I still can't
think of a better place to ask.

( cuts )
I'm guessing 80' vintage computing devices so you are on topic for this
group.

I'm guessing that you have run out of alternatives to jour programmer and software tools. ;\

I am successfully running an originally W3.1 program on a WXP( that has
NEVER talked to the Internet ) Virtualbox session on a Linux PC. The
printer, the only 'outside' connection that it is allowed is a server dongle on the local LAN. So I'm not sure of how your parallel port devices will perform.

At a client's shop they were using a MSDOS PC to control a CNC welding rig that talked to two ISA boards with wide cables plugged in to the boards that ran to the machine. I rigged it so that the OS would boot and automatically drop to a dos prompt so that hhey could run their program. EXCEPT that it completed the test run in about 2 seconds, where if it were actually welding the piece, would be going for 2 or 3 minutes. Adding the 'AT-Slow' program made the system run at the correct speed after several trial runs to find
the correct speed. The PC was one that they provided, pulled out of a
clothset I guess,that I could get to boot and copy their files onto the
newer drive it came with.

You might get lucky and find your PC at a flea market or hamfest, possibly
get friendly with the local E-scrap recycling place.

If you can get a virtual setup that will talk to your specialized hardware, that might be your best chance of future proofing your rig.

Freddy,
an improvement on his successors.

--
Do not breathe vapors.

\|

/| I may be demented \|
/| but I'm not crazy! \| /|<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<\|
* SPAyM trap: there is no X in my address *


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: ---:- FTN<->UseNet Gate -:--- (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On 2025-03-28, Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> wrote:

We used to have two benchtop systems supporting this configuration. One
is Windows 2000 PC, which has amazingly managed to stay alive for more
than 25 years, with only occasional replacements of a mini-ATX power
supply. The other one had several heart transplants and its software
over the years crept from Windows 98 to Windows Vista, Windows XP and eventually Windows 7.

Thank you for gently reminding me that Vista was *after* XP.
I do remember that we had XP surviving in the lab *long* after we had eradicated Vista, and I think we still have an old laptop that boots up
in XP.

It makes sense that XP was first ... I still remember talking to driver developers that had worked with confidential pre-releases of a future
system called "Cairo" which later turned out to be spelled in Greek with
the letters Chi-Rho - or XP (like Christ).

It is funny how every other Windows release always was unrepairably bad:

Win95 - so new that everything had issues.
Win98 - much better and quite solid by the time of SP2
Win ME - many things changed for no good reason and broken in the
process.
Win XP - much better and rock solid by the time of SP2
Vista - ugly and breaking old, solid applications
Windows 7 - much better and each service pack better again
Windows 8 - as bad as Vista
Windows 10 - almost as good as Windows 7, followed by continuous
improvement. But they killed the 32-bit version.
Windows 11 - mostly feels like another annual update of Win10

I never understood why they had to ship the bad versions ?
The only reason we could not skip them our in end-user-land was that new
PCs came with new peripheral chips, for which drivers were only
available in the new Windows versions.

--
Lars Poulsen

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Lars Poulsen wrote:

This is sort-of-but-not-quite obliquely off-topic, but I still can't
think of a better place to ask.

On 2025-03-28, Freddy1X <freddy1X@indyX.netX> wrote:

I'm guessing 80' vintage computing devices so you are on topic for this group.

Actually, 1999 or so ...

I'm guessing that you have run out of alternatives to jour programmer and software tools. ;\

The compiler/linker/debugger chain we used for the PowerQUICC chips was produced by a company called Tasking Software, which went under. The
ashes were bought by Altium, but I think they just wanted the customer
list. If you paid the full license fee, they would allow you to buy a
set of installation CDs, but could not provide any support.

The hardware dongle used by their debugger was made by another company,
which has also gone out of business decades ago.

Fortunately, the original linker used standard ELF format, so we can use
a PPC targeted GNU C/C++ compiler in a pinch.

I am successfully running an originally W3.1 program on a WXP( that has NEVER talked to the Internet ) Virtualbox session on a Linux PC. The printer, the only 'outside' connection that it is allowed is a server dongle on the local LAN. So I'm not sure of how your parallel port devices will perform.

In our vintage shop, we find very little use for VM layering like that.
The legacy software DLLs do direct IO to the ISA-bus parallel port
registers. There is no straightforward mapping to PCI or PCIe parallel
port boards.

Similarly, the configuration tools for our embedded devices use non-IP protocols to talk to the devices (because we have to be able to operate
in a non-IP network environment), so we need a raw socket. If using a
VM to run these tools, the virtual ethernet port in the virtual machine
has to be bridged to an external port. It can be done, but it's a hassle to maintain across version upgrades of the host OS. Fortunately, the
Windows version of these tools can be built in Win32 compatibility mode
and still run on Windows 11.

At a client's shop they were using a MSDOS PC to control a CNC welding rig that talked to two ISA boards with wide cables plugged in to the boards that ran to the machine. I rigged it so that the OS would boot and automatically drop to a dos prompt so that hhey could run their program. EXCEPT that it completed the test run in about 2 seconds, where if it were actually welding the piece, would be going for 2 or 3 minutes. Adding the 'AT-Slow' program made the system run at the correct speed after several trial runs to find the correct speed. The PC was one that they provided, pulled out of a
closet I guess,that I could get to boot and copy their files onto the
newer drive it came with.

Yeah, that is a familiar story!

You might get lucky and find your PC at a flea market or hamfest, possibly get friendly with the local E-scrap recycling place.

I wish I had saved a few of the machines I scrapped 10 or 15 years ago. By
now, I have very little hope to find anything with an ISA bus. Those went
away for good when PCI expansion slots were replaced by PCIe (about the same time IDE drives were replaced by SATA).

If you can get a virtual setup that will talk to your specialized hardware, that might be your best chance of future proofing your rig.

I see no hope for that. I think it would require a complete reverse
engineering of the debugger-to-ICE interface embodied in the DLLs, so
that I could do the equivalent bit-wiggling in a newly built parallel
port board for a PCIe slot.

Fortunately, we plan to abandon the users of these embedded products in
the next couple of years. We have already told them they need to buy
units for their spare parts shelf ASAP.

Young people look at me strange when I tell them I feel bad about not
being able to do better than that.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Lars Poulsen wrote:

( many good points cut )

Fortunately, we plan to abandon the users of these embedded products in
the next couple of years. We have already told them they need to buy
units for their spare parts shelf ASAP.

Young people look at me strange when I tell them I feel bad about not
being able to do better than that.

If you are really, REALLY dedicated to your customers( translation: you are nuts ) you could turn Ghidra loose on those binaries and let the NSA's decompiling tool help you. ( I'm guessing that you may have already looked
at them. )

You might still find some still available motherboards that have a parallel port built in. Have you looked at Jameco.com? They just might have
something old enough in their catalog.

Freddy.
resesitating old hardware for gun and profit.
--
If rash occurs, discontinue use.

\|

/| I may be demented \|
/| but I'm not crazy! \| /|<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<\|
* SPAyM trap: there is no X in my address *


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: ---:- FTN<->UseNet Gate -:--- (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On 2025-03-29 14:43, Freddy1X wrote:

You might still find some still available motherboards that have a parallel port built in. Have you looked at Jameco.com? They just might have something old enough in their catalog.

I saw parallel port addon boards sold on Amazon when I bought my current machine.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: ---:- FTN<->UseNet Gate -:--- (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Reply-To: slp53@pacbell.net

Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> writes:

Lars Poulsen wrote:

This is sort-of-but-not-quite obliquely off-topic, but I still can't
think of a better place to ask.

In our vintage shop, we find very little use for VM layering like that.
The legacy software DLLs do direct IO to the ISA-bus parallel port
registers. There is no straightforward mapping to PCI or PCIe parallel
port boards.

I'd run the legacy software under qemu. It's open source, you should be able to
easily adapt the ISA bus parallel port emulation in qemu to talk
to any modern parallel port adapter. If you're running on a
small SBC (like the Raspberry pie) you can even emulate the
parallel port using gpio pins directly.



--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: UsenetServer - www.usenetserver.com (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On 2025-03-29 14:43, Freddy1X wrote:

You might still find some still available motherboards that have a parallel >> port built in. Have you looked at Jameco.com? They just might have
something old enough in their catalog.

On 2025-03-29, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

I saw parallel port addon boards sold on Amazon when I bought my current machine.

Current machines have a PCI-express expansion bus. Any add-in cards that
works in a current machine will implement a parallel printer port using
an API defined for that.

In my case, the application is not written to a documented API, but
manipulates the IO registers of the ISA-bus parallel port chip directly, something that (a) modern operating systems do not allow (for very good reasons) and (b) requires that the motherboard has a "legacy ISA-bus"
with the specific chips used by early PCs. That section of the
motherboard survived for a decade after the PCs replaced ISA bus slots
with PCI bus slots (and often dedicated VESA graphics slots). But in the
decade after that, the legacy stuff was dropped.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Lars Poulsen wrote:

I cannot be the only one here with a need to keep an obsolete
development environment running. In my case, this requires a Windows PC
with a legacy ISA-bus parallel port and the ability to run 286-mode
Windows executable programs (.EXE and .DLL).

This requirement stems from a need run a specific debugging package for
a PowerPC microcontroller with a BDM/JTAG port which is interfaced to
said parallel port.

On 2025-03-29, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

Is PCIe to Centronics out of the question?

What about LPC to Centronics?

These would work if the peripheral that I need to operate had been a
printer of some sort, where the old system would be using an OS-provided library of print functions. In this case, it is a debugging window into
the embedded CPU which uses ad-hoc trickery of two-way features of the
original PC-XT parallel port.

An adapter transmogrifies the parallel port into a 10-pin connector on
the microprocessor board:
Pin 1 VLS0/Freeze Pin 2 SRESET-
Pin 3 GND Pin 4 DSCK
Pin 5 GND Pin 6 VLFS1/Freeze
Pin 7 HRESET- Pin 8 DSDI
Pin 9 VDD Pin 10 DSDO
This allows to debugging program on the PC to read and write memory
and registers on the micro, as well as halt and run the micro, single
step and set breakpoints. It gives the same level of control as an
in-circuit CPU emulator, but using the actual CPU.

But given that we do not have source for the PC-resident program and the
DLL components it uses to access the parallel port, nor to the small
FPGA in the adapter cable, we have to find a way to provide that
parallel port.

- - -
I am allowing myself to go into some details here, because I think that
there are a fair number of us here that are my age and have been playing
this game, but probably nobody under 50 has ever laid hands on this kind
of stuff.

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Lars Poulsen wrote:

This is sort-of-but-not-quite obliquely off-topic, but I still can't
think of a better place to ask.

... and ...

In our vintage shop, we find very little use for VM layering like that.
The legacy software DLLs do direct IO to the ISA-bus parallel port >>registers. There is no straightforward mapping to PCI or PCIe parallel
port boards.

On 2025-03-29, Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:

I'd run the legacy software under qemu. It's open source, you should be able to
easily adapt the ISA bus parallel port emulation in qemu to talk
to any modern parallel port adapter. If you're running on a
small SBC (like the Raspberry pie) you can even emulate the
parallel port using gpio pins directly.

This is a good illustration of how open source allows us to fix
almost any problem with enough effort. But it is also an illustration
of the limits of that. I am happy to use qemu as a black box tool.
I do not have the ambition to learn its internals. (I turned 75
this week, and I have a few other projects that I think are more
fun.)

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Andy Burns wrote:

Is PCIe to Centronics out of the question?

...
What about LPC to Centronics?

Lars Poulsen wrote:

These would work if the peripheral that I need to operate had been a
printer of some sort, where the old system would be using an OS-provided LP>> library of print functions.

On 2025-03-29, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

I can understand that if the LPT port is behind a PCIe to ISA bridge, it would cause that issue, but as far as I understand, LPC is just a re-implementation of ISA with different signalling, but it just uses "old-fashioned" I/O port access.

e.g. <https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93291>

There are probably other LPC adapters ...

My apologies, I had never heard of LPC and just skipped the 3 letters
on my first reading. Then I had to find out what an LPC is.A
- Licensed Professional Counselor?
- Linear Predictive Coding?
- Local Port Connections?

Eventually, I found that is stands for Low Pin Count.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/program/design/us/en/documents/low-pin-count-interface-specification.pdf

https://superuser.com/questions/431913/what-is-a-intel-lpc-interface-controller

The latter article says:
LPC stand for Low Pin Count - it is the chip used to connect
all of the "legacy" PC components on motherboards. For
example it will control the PS/2, floppy, parallel and
serial ports.

Before the LPC all of these devices were in the ISA bus and
once boards stopped including them ISA slots, they switched
to LPC because it was a simplifier interface for the small
number of integrated devices they required. It is named
because it has a lower pin count than ISA.

So even if the legacy device connectors (serial and parallel ports,
floppy and PS/2 mouse) are no longer on the edge of the motherboard,
the head-end for an ISA bus is still available in the pinout of the
CPU chip, and MAY be available as a header on the motherboard.

And apparently, the first few years after the ports disappeared
from the ATX backplate, they were still on ribbon-cable headers
on some motherboards as seen in this SuperUser article from 2014: https://superuser.com/questions/627922/how-to-wire-the-lpt-and-com-port-headers-on-a-motherboard

Still, I will be easier if I find a MB with the right stuff.


--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On Sat, 29 Mar 2025 18:44:13 -0000 (UTC), Lars Poulsen wrote:

In my case, the application is not written to a documented API, but manipulates the IO registers of the ISA-bus parallel port chip directly, something that (a) modern operating systems do not allow (for very good reasons) and (b) requires that the motherboard has a "legacy ISA-bus"
with the specific chips used by early PCs.

The Raspberry Pi is purpose-built for this sort of low-level tinkering.
The API may not be identical, but I think that’s your only reasonable bet with any kind of future in it.

--- MBSE BBS v1.1.1 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> wrote in news:slrnvugfrt.3ei9j.lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com:

On 2025-03-29 14:43, Freddy1X wrote:

You might still find some still available motherboards that have a
parallel port built in. Have you looked at Jameco.com? They just
might have something old enough in their catalog.

On 2025-03-29, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

I saw parallel port addon boards sold on Amazon when I bought my
current machine.

Current machines have a PCI-express expansion bus. Any add-in cards that works in a current machine will implement a parallel printer port using
an API defined for that.

In my case, the application is not written to a documented API, but manipulates the IO registers of the ISA-bus parallel port chip directly, something that (a) modern operating systems do not allow (for very good reasons) and (b) requires that the motherboard has a "legacy ISA-bus"
with the specific chips used by early PCs. That section of the
motherboard survived for a decade after the PCs replaced ISA bus slots
with PCI bus slots (and often dedicated VESA graphics slots). But in the decade after that, the legacy stuff was dropped.

Hello,

A few years back while I was still working we needed some computers.
Among the possibilities were older CPUs and OSes in smaller boxes that did
have ISA slots. Try looking for "small factor controller with ISA slots".
No idea if one of those would help or you could get one. I bought an old
ISA SCSI-II card for my yery old tower with a 486 that is still alive.
Monitor is now shot and haven't looked at resurecting that machine yet.

Good luck to the original poster and all here!

--- MBSE BBS v1.1.1 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On 2025-03-29 14:43, Freddy1X wrote:

You might still find some still available motherboards that have a
parallel port built in. Have you looked at Jameco.com? They just
might have something old enough in their catalog.

Challenge with that is drivers. One would be looking for boards from an
early ATX generation, but while they will have the legacy ports, drivers
for other preipherals can be hit or miss.

On 2025-03-30, David LaRue <huey.dll@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

A few years back while I was still working we needed some computers.
Among the possibilities were older CPUs and OSes in smaller boxes that did have ISA slots. Try looking for "small factor controller with ISA slots".
No idea if one of those would help or you could get one. I bought an old ISA SCSI-II card for my yery old tower with a 486 that is still alive. Monitor is now shot and haven't looked at resurecting that machine yet.

Monitor is easy! Any cheap 17" to 22" LED panel will connect to the VGA
port on your tower.

--- MBSE BBS v1.1.1 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On 2025-03-29 21:11, Lars Poulsen wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

Is PCIe to Centronics out of the question?

...
What about LPC to Centronics?

Lars Poulsen wrote:

These would work if the peripheral that I need to operate had been a LP>> printer of some sort, where the old system would be using an OS-provided LP>> library of print functions.

On 2025-03-29, Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> wrote:

I can understand that if the LPT port is behind a PCIe to ISA bridge, it would cause that issue, but as far as I understand, LPC is just a re-implementation of ISA with different signalling, but it just uses "old-fashioned" I/O port access.

e.g. <https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=93291>

There are probably other LPC adapters ...

My apologies, I had never heard of LPC and just skipped the 3 letters
on my first reading. Then I had to find out what an LPC is.A
- Licensed Professional Counselor?
- Linear Predictive Coding?
- Local Port Connections?

Eventually, I found that is stands for Low Pin Count.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/program/design/us/en/documents/low-pin-count-interface-specification.pdf

https://superuser.com/questions/431913/what-is-a-intel-lpc-interface-controller

The latter article says:
LPC stand for Low Pin Count - it is the chip used to connect
all of the "legacy" PC components on motherboards. For
example it will control the PS/2, floppy, parallel and
serial ports.

Before the LPC all of these devices were in the ISA bus and
once boards stopped including them ISA slots, they switched
to LPC because it was a simplifier interface for the small
number of integrated devices they required. It is named
because it has a lower pin count than ISA.

So even if the legacy device connectors (serial and parallel ports,
floppy and PS/2 mouse) are no longer on the edge of the motherboard,
the head-end for an ISA bus is still available in the pinout of the
CPU chip, and MAY be available as a header on the motherboard.

And apparently, the first few years after the ports disappeared
from the ATX backplate, they were still on ribbon-cable headers
on some motherboards as seen in this SuperUser article from 2014: https://superuser.com/questions/627922/how-to-wire-the-lpt-and-com-port-headers-on-a-motherboard

Still, I will be easier if I find a MB with the right stuff.

Interesting.

I looked at the PDF of my current motherboard, and it has an LPT header, actually named "JLPT1: Parallel Port Connector". No idea how it is
interfaced, it only has the diagram. It is an "MSI® X470 GAMING PLUS MAX motherboard".

--
Cheers, Carlos.

--- MBSE BBS v1.1.1 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: ---:- FTN<->UseNet Gate -:--- (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On 2025-03-29 21:11, Lars Poulsen wrote:

So even if the legacy device connectors (serial and parallel ports,
floppy and PS/2 mouse) are no longer on the edge of the motherboard,
the head-end for an ISA bus is still available in the pinout of the
CPU chip, and MAY be available as a header on the motherboard.

On 2025-03-30, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

I looked at the PDF of my current motherboard, and it has an LPT header, actually named "JLPT1: Parallel Port Connector". No idea how it is interfaced, it only has the diagram. It is an "MSI® X470 GAMING PLUS MAX motherboard".

Since the easy way to make use of it is with a ribbon cable, it probably follows an obvious mapping, and apparently at one point, you could buy
the cable and 25-pin connector in the open market.

The main caveat is that you will probably need to enable the legacy
ports somewhere in the BIOS settings before they become visible to
the x86 CPU.

I wpould be curious to hear from folks who have tried this recently.

--- MBSE BBS v1.1.1 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

Lars Poulsen <lars@cleo.beagle-ears.com> wrote:

We used to have two benchtop systems supporting this configuration. One
is Windows 2000 PC, which has amazingly managed to stay alive for more
than 25 years, with only occasional replacements of a mini-ATX power
supply. The other one had several heart transplants and its software
over the years crept from Windows 98 to Windows Vista, Windows XP and eventually Windows 7.
But when the motherboard gave up the ghost a few months ago,
I found myself unable to find a viable replacement. While I did find two Compaq desktops of appropriate age, which came with Vista installed,
there were some driver problems that made the parallel port not work
quite right with the debugger DLLs. (And also the chassis is in bad
shape, and Compaq always had chassis that had "clever" mechanical
solutions that were incompatible with generic components.)

Does anyone have good hints for how to source hardware that will be
likely to work?

There are new 8086 PCs available from China, likely made with parts salvaged from e-waste:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/going-deep-with-the-book-8088-the-brand-new-laptop-that-runs-like-its-1981/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/a-few-weeks-with-the-pocket-386-an-early-90s-style-half-busted-retro-pc/

The second one has an ISA slot. I'm sure others can be found digging around the likes of Aliexpress, Alibaba, etc - there are probably full motherboard versions.

Of course the silicon is not new, but you get new power supplies,
capacitors, etc which might have a better lifetime than 40 year old ones.
Also they are made to play a bit more nicely with the modern world, eg to
use USB storage rather than floppies.

Theo

--- MBSE BBS v1.1.1 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: University of Cambridge, England (3:633/280.2@fidonet)

On 2025-03-30 22:38, Lars Poulsen wrote:

On 2025-03-29 21:11, Lars Poulsen wrote:

So even if the legacy device connectors (serial and parallel ports,
floppy and PS/2 mouse) are no longer on the edge of the motherboard,
the head-end for an ISA bus is still available in the pinout of the
CPU chip, and MAY be available as a header on the motherboard.

On 2025-03-30, Carlos E.R. <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

I looked at the PDF of my current motherboard, and it has an LPT header,
actually named "JLPT1: Parallel Port Connector". No idea how it is
interfaced, it only has the diagram. It is an "MSI® X470 GAMING PLUS MAX
motherboard".

Since the easy way to make use of it is with a ribbon cable, it probably follows an obvious mapping, and apparently at one point, you could buy
the cable and 25-pin connector in the open market.

The main caveat is that you will probably need to enable the legacy
ports somewhere in the BIOS settings before they become visible to
the x86 CPU.

It is visible in Linux (hwinfo in openSUSE) — I did not know but it
doesn't surprise me:

P: /devices/pnp0/00:04/printer/lp0
M: lp0
R: 0
U: printer
D: c 6:0
N: lp0
L: 0
E: DEVPATH=/devices/pnp0/00:04/printer/lp0
E: SUBSYSTEM=printer
E: DEVNAME=/dev/lp0
E: MAJOR=6
E: MINOR=0
E: USEC_INITIALIZED=32509461718
E: SYSTEMD_WANTS=printer.target
E: SYSTEMD_USER_WANTS=printer.target
E: TAGS=:systemd:
E: CURRENT_TAGS=:systemd:


I do have the cable (somewhere) and maybe three such printers, but no intention to use them :-)

I wonder, though, if my old Iomega ZIP would work. I could use that to
backup old software.

I wpould be curious to hear from folks who have tried this recently.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

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