About |
When Personal Computers became popular in the 1980’s, they quickly found their way in industrial applications and were a huge cost saver over the previously must have midrange computers like DEC VAX and IBM System 36. They were a fraction of the cost and third parties could easily make application specific cards, controllers or Single Board Computers (SBC’s) to run on a PC from any manufacturer.
These PC’s would house the application software that controlled the machinery through controller cards that were installed on the ISA expansion slots. In those days, computers only had ISA slots and that’s what they used.
Later on, PCI, AGP and now PCI Express slots were introduced that can carry huge amounts of data and perform lightning fast calculations. Many controller card companies have made the shift to these newer, faster and better interfaces but not all. There are quite a few applications that run just fine on those older ISA computers and have no intentions of changing.
But motherboards with ISA slots are not made any more – are they? Yes and no. Applications that cannot run on newer faster processors have to have older ISA computers that are the original Pentium, Pentium II or Pentium III. Parts for those computers are not made any more but companies like Interloper.com continue to find and refurbish them. For applications that require an ISA computer but with relatively faster and newer processors, you have to have Pentium 4 motherboards.
Interloper.com stocks these newer ISA Computers too with quite decent 3.0GHz speeds and up, with SATA and PCI Express slots along with ISA slots.
It’s amazing how the legacy technology of ISA computers has survived because of applications that continue to serve their purpose.
If you need an ISA Computer, contact http://interloper.com and see if they have a configuration that fits your requirements.