How can I find out about proprietary hardware?

Question

If I have two pieces of hardware (say, a PC with a custom ISA or PCI card connected to the hardware using some kind of crazy cable) and want to see as much as possible about the conversations between them, how can I go about it? In particular, I am interested in old scientific equipment connected to a Windows PC (old and new). Any links would be appreciated.

I'm not interested in anyone stealing everyone. I am a scientific programmer in academia, and we have to deal with orphaned equipment all the time. It really sucks in to throw away perfectly good equipment because the company has gone out of business and their software runs on Windows 3.1 and uses a proprietary ISA card. It would be nice to save some of these things (some things are expensive or impossible to replace) by writing my own code using a modern data acquisition card and a spliced ​​cable.

Answer 1

If possible / available, you can use a PCI bus analyzer or ISA to figure out how to contact the proprietary interface card. Then you can create a device driver for more modern operating systems using more modern hardware (possibly with the addition of a PCI-ISA bridge).

Answer 2

I would recommend googling for specs ...

Unfortunately, the most likely solution is that you will need to rebuild the protocol by placing something (your data collection card, perhaps?) Between your own card and the device.

Once you figure out the communication protocol (serial I / O, if you're lucky), you can start documenting the data stream and work from there.

(Only my $ 0.02, I have no experience in these matters.)

Answer 3

You probably need a signal analyzer or something similar, but ...

If the device uses a proprietary protocol for communication, you really have your work cut for you. I would seriously think, just an old old machine with an original interface card and software, until you can afford to replace the equipment.