DOS-based Mark-V HMI Virtualization possible?

Dear All,

Hope you all are in the best health. We have Mark-V system installed at our site here with DOS-based HMI. The issue we are facing the availability of 4 GB IDE Drives, since the system does not read any HDD greater than 4 GB. IDE Drive failure rate has also been increased so we are severely in need of a solution asap.

Solution 1 : Virtualization
One way to resolve this crisis is the virtualize our DOS-based HMI to window based. How ever we will need to find ARCNet Card with its drivers compatible with Windows and OKIdata Microline 490-24pin printer and I think we are good to go.

Solution 2 : Upgrade
Most unlikely to be approved

Solution 3 :
Any solution that the HMI motherboard can read IDE drives greater than 4 GB.

Virtualization is the most viable solution to me, need your precious inputs.
 
I'm not an expert in this area, but I found this link:
https://retrocomputing.stackexchang...limit-hdd-capacity-to-work-on-an-old-computer
It discusses a few options that may work for you, including a Linux command to make a larger drive look smaller and an IDE adapter for CF cards.

If you can find the hardware devices that will work on a Windows PC, you could also examine DOS Box, which is a virtual DOS environment. I haven't messed with it in a long time, and then only to tinker with very non-critical stuff, so I don't know if I would depend on it for this.
 
Rizwanhaider, this subject has been discussed many times before, I would suggest you use the search feature to look for related articles. Many of the difficulties are getting drivers for Arcnet cards with newer mother boards, disk drive sizes etc.
For your management group, I do not understand why they are not receptive to upgrading to a current platform. I have managed legacy devices and machines for various reasons through my career. But people don't seem to want to recognize the value of a generating asset and what it costs if that unit becomes unavailable. The MKV platform and the associated hardware has enjoyed a long successful career, but everything needs to be upgraded at some point to remain viable and reliable. Good luck with your project and I hope you are successful. Please write back and let us know how you proceed and how successful you are.
 
OK a little update here
We have managed to make a virtual machine in VMWare but somehow its not working. We have tried ACRONIS Image and Direct Disk to Virtual Disk cloning, but both version. Its gives divide error while booting up. Clock speed might be an issue but thats just our assumption. Any ideas?
 
I've had very limited success getting a VMWare image of a PC to work correctly. I got it to work one time (the original was Windows XP Pro) and that's it. All the other times, it blue screened on initial boot and I couldn't even get to safe mode.

I think your best bet is an upgrade. Second best is find a new hard drive that you can "downgrade" to fit, realizing that the old hardware that isn't compatible with modern PCs is also obsolete and increasingly likely to fail...and increasingly difficult to repair/replace. I really don't think virtualization is a good path here.
 
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