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Ask Slashdot: Supporting "Antique" Software?

Posted by timothy on from the why-in-my-day dept.

First time accepted submitter wolfguru writes "As the IT Manager for a large printing firm, I often have to provide hardware to support older software which is used to configure and maintain existing systems, some of which are nearly 20 years old. Much of the software uses RS-232 serial communications to connect to the PLC devices and is often 16 bit versions. Newer systems from the PLC manufacturers supports some of the equipment, but many of the older PLC consoles are essentially unreachable without the serial communications. For any of you faced with similar challenges in keeping a manufacturing environment maintenance department working; what do you use to support them and where do you find equipment that will run the older systems that are sometimes the only means of supporting these types of devices?"

3 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Have a look at PCs for Industrial Automation. by stasike · · Score: 5, Informative

    At work we use Industrial PCs for work with PLCs. You can still buy PC with an ISA slot, and most of industrial PCs have good old serial port. Just contact any competent supplied of industrial automation equipment.
    One of manufacturers is Advantech. Have a look at their UNO line of "brick" computers. Plenty of industrial RS232 and RS485 ports even in the most basic models. Computers are fanless and built to last. Unfortunatelly, those machines are bloody expensive.

    If you look really hard, you can even find new 486 machines. Those are even more expensive than Advantech bricks I wrote about, but there are still people that need those computers, so there are companies able to provide them at a cost.

  2. You're not alone by mykepredko · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi Timothy,

    Unfortunately, you didn't provide a lot of information in your post as to what the problems are.

    As people have pointed out, there are a ton of USB to Serial solutions out there so having the modern hardware with the ability to communicate over RS-232 is generally not a problem (although, depending on the connections used, you might want to invest in a RS-232 breakout box and read up on RS-232 handshaking as many of the older devices do use hardware handshaking). I have a few hand wired 9 pin to 25 pin connectors with the CTS-RTS and DSR-DTR pins shorted together as they can simplify your life immeasurably.

    In my experience, the biggest problem is retaining floppies & CDs with the original software on them (assuming that the developers are no longer supporting the product/are out of business). If the company is still in business, usually they're pretty good at providing updated software for their products. If they're not in business, then look to see if they were bought out by anybody. Chances are you'll find that the purchaser is still supporting the product, although it may be under another name.

    Personally, the biggest issue that I see when I have encountered this type of situation is that the original programs are on floppies. If this is the case, you will need to find somebody with a Windows/95 machine that they're keeping together with spit, bailing wire, gaffer's tape and good intentions - you should be able to copy the program onto a USB key and then burn it on a CD/DVD for more permanent storage.

    Once you have the program in a media that you can work with, you may have problems with the installation. You will probably have to create a virtual machine on your PC AND there may be 16 bit programs that you have to convert to 32 bit - here's a great resource that's saved me a couple of times: http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=10988

    Finally, Google is your friend. Chances are the answers are out there for your particular equipment.

    Good luck!

    myke

    --
    Mimetics Inc. Twitter
  3. Re:Please by Jappus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, newer SVN + patches builds for DosBox go much further than that:
    http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/SVN_Builds

    The best one, if you ask me, is the SVN Daum build (alas, their website is down at the moment). To quote its set of difference to Vanilla DosBox:

    Description: The Windows build incorporates Direct3D with pixelshaders, OpenglHQ, Innovation, Glide, zip/7z mount, Beep, NE2000 Ethernet, Graphis user interface (menu), Save/Load states, Vertical sync, CPU flags optimization, Various DOS commands (PROMPT, VOL, LABEL, MOUSE, etc) and CONFIG.SYS commands (DEVICE, BUFFERS, FILES, etc), Continuous turbo key, Core-switch key, Show details (from menu bar), Nice DOSBox icon, Font patch (cp437), MAKEIMG command, INTRO, Ctrl-break patch, DBCS support patch, Automatic mount, Printer output, MT-32 emulation (MUNT), MP3CUE, Overscan border, Stereo-swap, SDL_Resize, MemSize128, Internal 3dfx voodoo chip emulation, etc.

    I emphasized the important bit. What these two little words mean is the this DosBox build can not only emulate a DOS printer to dump stuff into various output formats (PNG, PDF, etc.), but it can also pass along the output to a Windows printer driver (which allows you to print to any USB printer) as well as use a real parallel port on your computer to let the DOS talk directly to the printer.

    I know at least one company that is using this DosBox build to support printing out of a 20+ year old billing software.