Boca Raton, FL, Nov. 18,
2005 -- Companies are eliminating or postponing
millions of dollars in capital expenditures
for upgrades in industrial computers by using
the resources of Electronic Solutions Associates
(ESA), which sells new motherboards that exactly
match up with 15-year-old computers.
For example, the 486 Baby AT motherboard was
used extensively in industrial product and test
equipment for more than a decade but it is no
longer produced by large manufacturers. While
the premium-priced 486 Single Board Computer
(SBC) with a passive backplane may be a drop-in
replacement, the format change is expensive.
ESA is the leading company that specializes
in 486 industrial motherboards in the legacy
Baby AT format.
“Our customers are looking for ways to
avoid capital equipment redesign. This is possible
because ESA has held the TF486 Baby AT design
stable for more than five years. Even a simple
mounting hole change can be expensive, especially
to customers with an installed product base
of 25,000 or more. We anticipate no significant
design changes moving forward,” said Tony
Proia, President of ESA. “We have several
customers that have forgone our premium drop-in
Single Board Computer (SBC) option for the long-life
TF486 with updated BIOS.”
“ESA customers are surprised to discover
that, with a new TF486 motherboard, they can
utilize updated hard drives, Disk on Chip, a
watchdog timer, seven ISA slots, one shared
PCI/ISA slot, and a Baby AT format that can
accommodate a wide range of CPUs,” Proia
continued. “Based on customer feedback,
our product mission is to make this 486 motherboard
available on a long term basis. This means that
our customers gain more control over product
market entry and the timing of new capital equipment
acquisition by postponing or eliminating industrial
computer upgrade and development costs.”
Electronic Solutions Associates is a unique
source for application specific industrial computers
and subsystems in the Value Added Reseller (VAR)
market. It maintains its core of Fortune 500
customers with both cutting edge and legacy
computing solutions.
ESA is privately-held and located in Oldsmar,
Florida.
