Q-Soft originally created by Tyco is a real time system targeted at MS-DOS and
a GUI system targeted at Windows 98SE/Windows Millenium.
PPM owns Q-Soft now and has a Windows 7 replacement and a completely reworked
pick and place machine.
If you know what surface mount electronics are you are well on your way to
understanding what the Quad QSP-2 is.
The Tyco machine is 20 year old technology, but the system is worth $30k+. Why
are there two computers? Windows 98
is not a real time system and the Tyco real time head uses a ton of ISA cards.
Getting SBCs, industrial single board
computers, that are 20 years old and in good working condition is neither easy
nor cheap these days. Supporting
Windows 98se which is abandonware is not easy, and no you can't get the source
for 98se nor can you use it without a
key. MSDOS 6.22 is closed source, not supported, and you are supposed to use a
licensed copy even though you cannot
buy one anymore. Microsoft could come after you for using MS-DOS that you
didn't purchase from them, same for Windows
98SE.
If you have a broken down Tyco QSP-2 and you are rich, go ahead and buy PPM's
QSP-2. Thing is, I'm not that impressed
with PPM's system and I'm not happy with Windows 7. It's a decent system, but
I'd rather run ReactOS when it stabilizes.
ReactOS by the way is of no value if you are trying to fix a Tyco QSP-2 and it
is stalled in development at the moment.
They have 16 or more major blockers to the next release where the next release
isn't even a beta. They are hurting
in the area of programming a new memory manager. Their memory manager must be
completely rewritten and replaced. Few
programmers can do this and even fewer of the ones who can if any are working
on ReactOS. ReactOS 0.4.13 is heavily delayed, and it's not even going to be a
beta that is suitable for everyday use, let alone a pounded out gold release.
Freedos could replace MS-DOS for the real time side of a Tyco QSP-2 but without
hacking, an NT style Windows will never
replace the GUI side of a Tyco QSP-2.
ReactOS was Freewin95 at first, but when Microsoft abandoned dos based Windows,
the ReactOS project did as well.
There are probably more systems than just the Tyco QSP-2 that rely on Windows
9x and MSDOS that are not cheap systems
where you cannot simply drop in NT without heavily re-engineering the system.
Michael Robinson
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