Are there 286/386/486 PC-on-a-card type cards for computers P2/P3 era PCs?

[dosbox]

Are there 286/386/486 PC-on-a-card type cards for computers P2/P3 era PCs? Is there even such a thing as any sort of PC-on-a-card for PCs? Sorry if this is considered offtopic.

 

[Plasma]

There are industrial single board computers (SBCs). But they are designed to plug into a PCI/ISA backplane. I think you would have major problems if you plugged one into an actual motherboard.

 

[simplex]

There are industrial single board computers (SBCs). But they are designed to plug into a PCI/ISA backplane. I think you would have major problems if you plugged one into an actual motherboard.

I know some people have converted motherboards to become passive hosts for SBCs, though I suppose the OP isn't wanting to do that.

Various the other way round though, to upgrade rather than downgrade a machine. But 286 > P3 is a fair stretch!

 

[lowen]

Are there 286/386/486 PC-on-a-card type cards for computers P2/P3 era PCs? Is there even such a thing as any sort of PC-on-a-card for PCs?....

Well, if you can find an Evergreen Systems CAPcard you can do this, since the CAPcard (an ISA single-board computer designed to fit in a passive backplane) has a jumper (on the 386SX/486SLC/SLC2 variants) to turn off the bus drivers, and the later CAPcard 9500 (486DX/DX2/DX4 and Pentium OverDrive) has a large jumper board that physically removes the signals from the ISA bus to the CAPcard's drivers. So you could put a CAPcard into any ISA slot on any motherboard.

Since it is a full PC on a card, it would need its own monitor, keyboard, hard disk, etc. But it is definitely possible.

I have a small quantity of the CAPcard 425e and 440e (486SLC/25 and 486SLC2/40, which are 386SX-pinout chips), and a few CAPcard 9500's without the bus jumpers (with 486DX2/66 and Pentium OverDrive 83 CPU's). They all need CMOS battery replacements (soldered-in lithium button cell).

 

[dosbox]

@plasma:

If I were to buy a SBC, how much would it cost me to buy one plus the backplane and everything I need? Also, what other things would I need?

@simplex

If I had a spare board, I might consider trying it but I don't know what skills it would require. I don't even know how to use a soldering iron (or any other tool that isn't a screwdriver).

 

[GiGaBiTe]

The only similar such thing I know of was a strange PCI card that had VGA, two PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard and one serial port. A guy I used to know in the late 90s sold these cards that basically turned one PC into two, where the monitor and such on the PCI card used the host CPU sort of like a thin client.

I don't remember what the name of the card was though and I haven't seen the guy that sold them in well over a decade.

 

[Plasma]

The only similar such thing I know of was a strange PCI card that had VGA, two PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard and one serial port. A guy I used to know in the late 90s sold these cards that basically turned one PC into two, where the monitor and such on the PCI card used the host CPU sort of like a thin client.

I don't remember what the name of the card was though and I haven't seen the guy that sold them in well over a decade.

Hmmm....I remember that now. Vega PC Buddy. Only worked with Windows 9x and was apparently a big turd.

There was also 3DO Blaster, basically an entire 3DO on an ISA card that you could put in your computer to play 3DO games in a window. Not sure what the point was, maybe to pretend like you were doing work?

If I were to buy a SBC, how much would it cost me to buy one plus the backplane and everything I need? Also, what other things would I need?

All that stuff would be used so really just whatever you can get it for. But probably more expensive than a regular 286/386/486. Unless you need to cram multiple PCs into one case (or you want a butt load of ISA slots) I wouldn't go that route. And even then you would need separate drives for each PC and possibly separate backplanes too.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Hmmm....I remember that now. Vega PC Buddy. Only worked with Windows 9x and was apparently a big turd.

I'm pretty sure that the one I was shown was very different from the PC Buddy. I looked up Vega on archive.org and theirs was an ISA card with a fat umbilical cable to a breakout box with the connectors in it. The one I was shown was an actual PCI card with the physical connectors coming out the back of the card.

All that stuff would be used so really just whatever you can get it for. But probably more expensive than a regular 286/386/486. Unless you need to cram multiple PCs into one case (or you want a butt load of ISA slots) I wouldn't go that route. And even then you would need separate drives for each PC and possibly separate backplanes too.

SBCs are usually very expensive, even the really old ones. They hold their value because there are still multi million dollar industrial machines that use those cards and companies don't mind dropping up to $1000 on one of those cards when they come up on eBay. The only time I've seen them go cheap is when sellers don't know what they are and just price them as some random part.

 

[Maverick1978]

SBCs are usually very expensive, even the really old ones. They hold their value because there are still multi million dollar industrial machines that use those cards and companies don't mind dropping up to $1000 on one of those cards when they come up on eBay. The only time I've seen them go cheap is when sellers don't know what they are and just price them as some random part.

Spot on... further, if an SBC fails, they are often difficult to repair and expensive to replace.

If you're after this type of setup for space constraints, it might be more worthwhile to use one of those "testbench" cases that provide secure mounting for motherboards, then swap boards out at your leisure. Various class motherboards can usually be had very, very cheaply, whereas finding SBCs to use with your backplane will cost larger amounts of money.

My observations, pentium-class SBC's are pretty easily found and relatively cheap (less than $100 USD), but go to 486 and lower, and you start talking big bucks.

If space is really the concern, my best advice is to use a 486, say a 486 DX2-66, then use slow-down utilities such as SlowMo to better emulate the older processors. For faster processors, well, you're normally gaming and are after 3D graphics and better sound. At that point, you're talking PCI and Win95/98, so you really need a Pentium chipset - pick your flavor and have a 2nd computer, setup a KVM to share your monitor/mouse/keyboard, and call it a day.

 

[dosbox]

I'm not really interested in these because of space constraints, I just find them interesting. I actually started this thread thinking that you could put an sbc into a PC (more likely a P2/P3 era or earlier) computer, but I learned how wrong I was.

 

[glitch]

There was a Pentium 3 coprocessor PCI card available for Sun systems with PCI slots that let you run x86 stuff on it, even though the host system was SPARC. Pretty sure my SunBlade 100 still has one in it. Theoretically it could be used with any system with PCI slots, but I doubt drivers/programs for it exist outside of Solaris.

Orange Micro produced one called the Orange PC which was a similar thing for running Windows 95 (and presumably other x86 stuff) on a PCI-equipped Macintosh. Again, it should technically work with other PCI-equipped machines, but software to use it probably doesn't exist outside of Mac OS.

 

[dosbox]

I actually remember seeing a video where a guy had a P4 SBC inside his Amiga 2000, and it was interesting to see it in action. The only caveat, was that the user has to put in a more powerful power supply to power the Amiga and the SBC inside it.

 

[lowen]

There was a Pentium 3 coprocessor PCI card available for Sun systems with PCI slots that let you run x86 stuff on it, ...

I have one of those around here somewhere.... This was actually fairly common in the Unix workstation world; Apollo had it's 'PC/ElevATor' for the ISA DN-series workstations (DOS only, in a PAD (Apollo-ism; a PAD would be a souped-up xterm-like 'thing')). AT&T's UnixPC had a non-ISA PC-on-an-expansion-card called, as I recall, the DOS-73, which was 8086-based.

EDIT: here's an archived InfoWorld article on Google Books, from 1989, on the subject: https://books.google.com/books?id=sjAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=pc+elevator+apollo&source=bl&ots=JS-1leqXkW&sig=B0ygqalfDCvnsSiUohib91nJYlc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjxydjRwpXKAhXJ4CYKHXk2D38Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=pc%20elevator%20apollo&f=false

 

[JohnElliott]

I remember seeing advertisements for something similar, sold as a PC upgrade (mid-90s, I think). It was basically a PC on a full-length ISA card, and the idea was you'd disconnect the power supply, reset switch etc from the motherboard and connect them to this card instead. I think the ISA connection was purely mechanical -- no circuit traces -- just to keep the card in place. Basically a way to upgrade a case that didn't take a standard form factor motherboard.