This is not a query but a follow-up answer to our own question of about
two months ago.
 
The Northgate 386/387 running CoMos for the BioRad MRC 600 died.  We
temporarily got the system to run on an old Swan 386/387; it was as
simple as plug-and-play except that disk access creeped.  Popping the cards
in a new Gateway Pentium with three IDE slots was also as simple as
plug-and-play (the difficult part was ordering a Pentium with three IDE
slots).  We do get an error message when CoMos starts running, but
performance does not seem to be compromised.
 
On the other hand, getting the old Sony SMO drive to work was not as
simple.  Sony was unable to provide us with technical support for the
driver although they were very forthcoming with info on the hardware; we
called Sony because the company that wrote the driver software seems to
no longer exist.  We have the disk drive running with the driver set with
the /p option which, buried in the manual says runs slower than using the
proper DMA settings.  If anybody has clues regarding the proper DMA
settings, please let us know, we'd love to have the system run quicker.
 
Anyhow, getting the confocal running on an alternate PC was easier than
we expected-- only four or five hours on hold for technical support.
 
-Michael