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« on: March 16, 2021, 03:10:22 pm »
I got more or less the same answer from Digi 20 years ago. I got the same from Quatech.
There are a lot of Gasonics PEP out on the used market. An internet search reveals dozens available. It's hard to imagine the use for them. I can imagine that the software could be modified to run on one OS/2 computer without the network. I would have set it up, but PEP was end-of-life by the time I worked on it.
I did make a replacement computer for PEP based on an Industrial computer. That computer cost quite a bit more than the current value of a PEP on the used market. Practically, it might make sense to buy two PEP and use one for parts.
The OS needs to be real-time, which OS/2 is not. But Windows and maybe Linux are worse at real-time than OS/2. The replacement for PEP ran on a real time OS.
Making OS/2 virtual probably makes things worse. Is there such a thing as a real-time Virtual PC? Anyway, that's why there are three computers. The right and left just do precise real-time control of the robots and oven.
An OS/2 machine with a Pentium 3 would easily control 99 serial ports in not quite real time. That's why so many robotics setups were using OS/2. Windows and Linux in the same situation would generally not control even one serial port. That's why there are so many network-based serial solutions - to off-load the real-time to a dedicated processor/operating system.