As of May 1, 2016, RBD will be discontinuing support for the PC137 and PCMap1 interface boards for legacy PHI / Perkin-Elmer systems. If you’re still using your PC137 and.or PCMap1 interface board, you’ll have a number of options for keeping your system up and running.
Why we’re discontinuing support:
Both the PC137 and PCMap1 are ISA cards. The ISA interface was designed in the days of DOS computers, and support for the interface has been waning since Windows XP. While these legacy interfaces could still serve their purpose (even at ISA’s slow speed (by today’s standards), security issues have caused Microsoft to drop support for ISA libraries in their latest development environments.
What it means if you are running these legacy interfaces:
If your PC is up and running with the PC137/PCMap1 interface(s), you of course don’t need to do anything right away. However, you won’t be able to upgrade Windows, and finding a replacement PC with ISA slots can be challenging (although they are available).
You also will not be able to run that latest (or any future versions) of AugerScan and AugerMap. Both applications are still being updated with new features and bug fixes, however without available ISA libraries they will no longer support communications with either boards.
Replacing the PC137 and PCMap1 Interfaces
If you chose to update your PC137 / PCMap interface, you’ll be replacing them with a single full size PCI interface board, and a RBD147 interface unit. Just as the ISA card are hard to find, so are full size PCI slots these days. But you can get a PC with the latest Windows operating system (currently 11) and a full size PCI slot built up by practically any local PC shop.
The RBD147 unit provides all the breakout interfaces (such as DR11) for the individual PHI units. (The PCMap1 is replaced by the PCMap2 interface, which is part of the RBD147 and is physically located inside the unit). The current versions of AugerScan and AugerMap both run on the latest Windows operating system.
More information on RBD’s upgrades can be found here.
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