PC_BASE

When PC_BASE first appeared, it also caused great repercussions in the industrial control field. At that time, the controllers were quite expensive. I remember that at that time, a 250M hard disk of Westinghouse WDPF control system sold for 50,000 pieces, and the low cost of PC hardware was quite attractive to everyone. Engineers at that time were divided into two groups. One group thought that PC was developed for commercial use, and the control community could only absorb its useful technology. The other group thought that the wide application of PC technology, with so many software and hardware resources available, was of great benefit to the standardization of controllers and the reduction of costs.

In this process, domestic industrial manufacturers, including DCS, PLC and various special controllers, widely adopted PC_BASE structure to develop new products. At that time, most of them used 386 and 486, of which 386X_M6117D of ICOP was the best industrial-grade 386 CPU. Unfortunately, I could only buy M6117C and had to switch to 486DX4-100M of MAPLE.

In recent years, PC_BASE has encountered a big problem in its development. At the beginning, everyone chose PC_BASE because it was easy to develop, especially in the DOS era and WIN98 era, everyone could write a very complicated control program in a week. When the network was just established, everyone exchanged needed goods through BBS, and at that time, they felt that everything was under control.

Nowadays, there are fewer and fewer DOS users, so many manufacturers are guiding engineers to take the platform of WIN, and WIN's shielding of the bottom layer makes the majority of bottom-level software development engineers feel depressed, because the development of WDM drivers in WINNT system needs DDK tools, even using simple development tools such as XTOOLS makes people feel itchy, which greatly offsets the openness and convenience of PC_BASE. At the same time, the low reliability of WINNT system makes most engineers stop.