[labnetwork] Plasmatherm ISA Card- Computer Motherboards & full Computer replacements for Plasmatherm systems.

[eric at dssurplus.com]

Shawn, I saw your note on Labnetwork regarding the Plasmatherm computer, Motherboard & Analog/Digital cards.  The problem you are experiencing is due to the fact Plasmatherm older software was key coded due to the technology back then. So you are limited to the type of Motherboards, hard drive size, graphic & ethernet drivers you can use as replacements.   That is why Plasmatherm offers an upgrade which will cost you approx. $45K.  

Direct Source Surplus specializes and Plasmatherm computers with software, Analog, Digital cards and other spares parts for all types of Plasmatherm systems at a less expensive alternative.  We have several already set up and tested computers for both 790 and SLR type systems.  Please give us a call or send me an email if you have any questions or need spares.  My contact information is listed below.  

Direct Source Surplus, LLC

5101 Deerchase Trail

Wake Forest, NC 27587

(919) 556-8930

Email:  <mailto:eric at dssurplus.com> eric at dssurplus.com

 <http://www.dssurplus.com> www.dssurplus.com

 

From: Shawn Wright <wrightsh at lnf.umich.edu <mailto:wrightsh at lnf.umich.edu> >
Date: September 28, 2020 at 19:45:03 EDT
To: labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu <mailto:labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu> 
Subject: [labnetwork] Plasmatherm ISA Cards



Hi Everyone,

 

Does anyone have experience getting Plasmatherm's ISA IO cards to work with a computer that uses an IT8888G PCI-ISA Bridge?

 

A little bit ago our systems 486 motherboard partly died, I lost video and replacing the ISA - VGA card with similar units off of eBay didn’t do the job.  I was able to find a new single board computer and an ISA backplane with 8 slots, however I can’t get all of our IO cards to work with it.  This new computer has a 2012 vintage CPU with a PCI - ISA bridge chip (IT8888G), and from what I’ve found it looks like pretty much any newer computer with ISA support uses this chip.

 

Our system has 2 digital IO cards (Plasmatherm's 77026 96 channel ), and 3 analog IO cards (2 ROBOTROL ADA88’s and 1 Nova-Research ADS168). In my BIOS I’m able to map memory and IO address space to the ISA bus via the IT8888G chip.  If I map IO space for the digital cards (320-32E and 330-33E) they seem to work as expected and I can manually turn things on and off via the software.  However if I add in any or all of the analog boards (address space 300-303, 304-307 and 308-30B) my digital cards stop working.  It seems like they’ll get one successful read/write cycle when I launch the software then stops because it’ll show the last state of all the digital inputs correctly, but no longer updates any of the d-in’s or d-out’s.

 

It also looks like the SYSMON software does some sort of initialization on the 3 analog cards.  Depending on what ones I have installed I can get an error on launch saying can’t initialize board 1, 2, or 3.  Where as there doesn’t seem to be any checks to see if the digital cards are actually installed or not.  The other weird thing is if I just open up more address space, like 320-39E, I would expect to get a can’t initialize board 1 error since 300-30B isn’t bridged so it shouldn’t be able to communicate with any analog boards.  However I actually don’t get any board initialization errors, but the digital cards also don’t work.

 

I also have options for DDMA channels in my BIOS, I’ve tried with them enabled and not enabled and it doesn’t seem to make any difference.  The ISA backplane also came with a set of termination resistors, I’ve tried with them all installed and none of them installed and it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

 

This is the SBC I’m using: https://www.advantech.com/products/1-2jkn7b/pca-6763/mod_ed19377c-5db9-4024-bf7b-c556dfb2afac

 

This is the PCI - ISA bridge chip: http://www.ite.com.tw/uploads/product_download/IT8888G_V0.9_05162005.pdf

 

 

Thanks,

Shawn Wright

Lurie Nanofabrication Facility

University of Michigan

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Eric Traphagen

919-556-8930

eric at dssurplusc.om <mailto:eric at dssurplusc.om> 

www.dssurplus.com

 

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