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Good, cheap, Small form factor PC compatible

D

dfnr2

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I want to build a few DOS machines to use as disk emulators for vintage HP machines, using Ansgar Kückes' HPDrive program. Since old ISA-based GPIB cards are cheap and plentiful, it makes sense to go with an ISA machine. But I want as small a form factor as I can get, and as much processor as I can get in a small ISA-bus computer.

Any suggestions for a small form-factor ISA-based computer that is cheap and available? Perhaps some kind of lightweight client machine? I'd like to build 4 or 5 of these at once.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Dave
 
I have 3 Pentium 233 SBC computers (they're the size of a 16 bit ISA card with Networking, keyboard, mouse, 2 serial, and a parallel) that work with a small backplane (PICMG). You can make them as large or small as you want. I've also just used ISA riser cards instead of the PICMG backplanes. Smaller yet.
 
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I know Compaq made small form factor deskpros with ISA up to about pentium 2 era, I owned a 400mhz one, so I know they went at least that fast. They had onboard video, serial, usb1, and 2 or 3 PCI slots, one of which was a shared ISA, but it could only fit half length cards not sure on the size of your card.
 
RWallmow said:
I know Compaq made small form factor deskpros with ISA up to about pentium 2 era, I owned a 400mhz one, so I know they went at least that fast. They had onboard video, serial, usb1, and 2 or 3 PCI slots, one of which was a shared ISA, but it could only fit half length cards not sure on the size of your card.
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Here is one of those Compaq SFF Deskpros, new in box someone is selling on ebay
 
My HP 3216 has two ISA slots and 1 PCI. It supports up to a 233MHz Pentium MMX processor.

Looking at the HPDrive page http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdrive/ looks like you will need to run some form of MS Windows to run the drive emulator. These machines take 256megs of ram so Win9x, NT4 or W2k will be ok on them.

The Compaq ENs would be a good choice if you want to go with PCI. I've got 800 celeron version. They're a dime a dozen and there may well even be a replacement riser with an ISA option.
 

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RWallmow said:
That's a very good point, I hadn't even realized what genre this was posted in.
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Pentium, other, general discusion and a few other forums would probably be just as, if not more suitable. You were just replying to the OP. The emulator requirements, acording to the link I posted, requires some form of Windows (95 up) OS, something an 8086 thru 286 class would have trouble with I suspect, so don't feel guilty.

That 486 looks neat though and would do the trick.
 
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Caluser2000 said:
Pentium, other, general discusion and a few other forums would probably be just as, if not more suitable. You were just replying to the OP. The emulator requirements, acording to the link I posted, requires some form of Windows (95 up) OS, something an 8086 thru 286 class would have trouble with I suspect, so don't feel guilty.

That 486 looks neat though and would do the trick.
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Yeah, I don't feel guilty about replying, but I must be off my game, I usually would have told him to try the Pentium or even off topic threads, I just hadn't noticed. That's what I get for doing my initial reply on my iPhone ;-)
 
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