I still use a cnc milling machine controlled by a 386. The only way to load gcode is via manual entry or floppy. However, it still gets the job done just fine for 90% of my needs.

We've got an old cnc lathe that originally ran via a BBC Micro. It ended up being supported by linuxcnc so it might be possible to update your controller if it becomes annoying.

Looking at the problem a different way (maybe), you can buy BBC Basic and run it on modern x86 hardware.

There's probably a way to fit an SD card or flash drive in a floppy emulator?

I'm curious now. Is that a 386 PC? Does it boot off of a small hard drive?

There are adapters that let you use SD cards in place of floppy or IDE drive.

compactflash is nearly pin compatible with ATA, i had several laptops repurposed as home routers with CF cards on little adapters. I could probably dig one out and take a picture.

edit: shoot, i think i meant IDE, not ATA

Yep, my Amiga 1200 does exactly this. It’s very tempting to put it on the internet.

ATA and IDE is the same thing. Usually CF cards will just work on adapters.

Do they support hotplugging? afaik traditional floppies do and could be essential to workflows if you can avoid the costly reboot time.

There are adapters to use flash cards in real 3½" floppy drives.

I had a nice metal one made by Sony years ago. Flash card slides in one side, and there's a place for a button cell to power it. Then you just stick the whole thing into the floppy drive like a regular disk.

How many OS assumptions does it break to have a massively oversized capacity on a floppy drive?

Or is it just using 1.44mb of a multi-GB SD card?

The GoTEK (or similar) use several floppy images (each one 1.44 MB) and you can select manually which one to use.

I think it depends on the model, but should be able to select among up to 100 or 1000 such images.

Often, these present as multiple floppy sized chunks for exactly the reason you cite. I don't know about the Sony described, but the Gotek I have has a little front panel that let's you select a numerical floppy unit that presents as a: or whatever.

I'm assuming if it's a floppy emulator it just has floppy density, but you can emulate an IDE hard drive as well.

No, it is not a ATA/IDE (nor SATA) device, it is intended as a "direct replacement" for floppy drives (on embroidering machines, music instruments, CNC and similar), so it uses the 34 floppy connection (on PC-like hardware).

There is - besides Gotek - an alternative which is open source and (if one wants to) DIY, the HxC, a few different possibilities:

http://hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/index.html

Oh, I may have been misunderstanding the parent comment but it sounded like they were saying it was an adapter that let you put flash memory devices of some sort into a regular floppy drive.

There are exactly such devices.

Neutron star density

GoTek being most popular, yes.

We're in a similar position and the PC runs DOS, with all of it's memory limitations. Any of our bigger pieces need to be run in multiple jobs as one job won't hold enough data to complete it.

You may be able to use a "drip feed" / DNC (direct numeric control) system, where NC code is fed to your machine from an external controller. At a previous company we had a modern PC on the network, with connections to ethernet COM port modules installed on the CNC machines. You'd choose a program for a machine, set up the machine controller to run a program from tape (or somesuch.. it depends on the controller), cycle start.. boom, you're running a large program over the network. It's a very handy solution.

Sounds like Klipper but for cnc.

The scheme is a huge win on 3d printers even though it adds a component to the system (generally a bad thing all else being equal, but all else is not equal).

Even when you aren't talking about being stuck with some old proprietary and limited controller & firmware but can buy powerful new wide open controllers and load your own up to date open source firmware on them, it still ends up being even better to have the minimal klipper firmware on the controller and do all the real work on a host.

We have Moxas on almost all of our machines now. This one is a special case.

While I don’t recall ever having a problem with DOS, have you ever tried OS/2? We never attempted it due to the relative fragility of the system and lack of support, but thought it would have provided some more modern capabilities (this was back between 2000-2003).

Unfortunately it wouldn't help since you'd still need to re-write the program (or at least port to a 32-bit compiler and use a DOS Extender), it's the 64k memory segmentation that's the issue

There's a bunch of 386s on the ISS. The main systems on the ISS are MDMs (multiplexer-demutiplexer) that communicate with "dumb" devices like sensors, actuators, and motors. The MDMs contain removable boards with a hardened 386, RAM, an EEPROM, and talk over a 1553 bus. Some MDMs live on the outside components of the station and some live inside. Astronauts can replace the CPU boards inside the MDMs if they burn out. The station has a few dozen MDMs each with four or more boards inside.

My company still manufactures new products that use a 186 >.<

I have a tray of i386EX33's in my parts bin. I figured I'd make something out of one eventually.