Extra SBC processor for industrial PC System

It sounds rather like you have one PC doing "real work" and another that will handle some kind of user interface (the XP board). In this case I would recommend not tying the buses together - use some interface like Ethernet, that doesn't have the same potential for bugs in the UI side to bring down the workhorse.

First of all, have you max. out on the PC? Are you running Dual or Quad CPUs/cores already? If not, you should look into that rather than a PCI CPU.

That seems backward. I would run XP on the PC and the RTOS on the additional processer(s).

Programming the XP driver would be a nightmare.

That board looks like it has a PCI connector intended for the controller slot in a PIC-MG passive backplane. It wouldn't work in a regular slot in a PC.

-Dave

Currently running a Dual Core Pentium 4 (3GHz) host motherboard. This processing however is already used. What I need is extra processing.

I share your view on the RTOS. I would rather use an RTOS but unfortunately the processin libraries I need to run, are Windows based.

Looks like I still need a solution.

Dave

What kind of processings, i/os and program interfaces, apps, libraries or active-x? Can they be linked with pure sockets and/or files? We need more info in order to make suggestions.

Have a look an slot cpu boards and passive backplanes. There are split backplanes which allow to install two or four cpu boards with peripherial boards (pci or isa) in a single 19" case with a common power supply. All cpu boards are independent from each other, so you can run one with Windows, one with Linux and one with VxWorks. The communication between the boards is up to you - some kind of network, shared memory boards or fifo devices that use pci slots from two systems or something else.

PICMG slot cpu boards and split backplanes are standard parts.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Frank-Christian Krügel