What more would you like to know?
The limitation with the 2402 is simply its age. The hardware is well made so, that aspect of the age is not a big issue. But DOS is a problem. MANY modern interfaces assume that you have some version of Windows later than W98.
It was very difficult to find the national instruments GPIB driver and C programming library for DOS. Even national instruments itself doesn't know what drivers to use for the GPIB board that was distributed with the 2402. I eventually got it. Another difficulty then was a C compiler suitable for DOS. I ended up using Turbo-C 3.0. I had used that program (version 2) back in the day, but I forgot/didn't realize how much C (not even C++) has changed with the C99 and later standardizations. It was a little difficult to rearrange my brain to suit the early C language!
This entire project was very interesting BECAUSE this hardware was used as the foundation for several different standards (PC-104 for the video and EBX for the mobo). But they do not follow the exact standard that was devised subsequently!
I think that it is very worthwhile to upgrade the motherboard to the Versalogic VSBC2. It is a drop-in replacement physically. and I only needed to modify the connectors on the serial ports (two 2x10, to one 2x20), and the PCB to mirror the PC-104 connections for the ISA bus header, and a power supply for the mobo.
But after that inconvenience you get a lot more RAM, and more speed, and 486 instruction set with math coprocessor. This HW is completely capable of running windows 98, which will still allow 16-bit DOS programs to run fine (usually). I am using DOS 6.33 and not windows.
If you wanted to keep the 286 motherboard, then you pretty much need to stay with DOS, which is not a big problem at all. 1M of total memory is quite sufficient for most purposes in the usage of the 2402A. I simply liked the challenge of making what I call a 2402 "B". Or maybe it should be called the "C" version. The "B" version could have been a 386 CPU. and a 486/586 might have been the "C" version!
Let me know what more info you would like and I will help out any way I can
-Tony
