Whats Wrong With The Centrum Research System?
The fundamental problem with Centrum is that the company went out of business. However, there is more to it than that. The trouble is the hardware design was obsolete even before the product was introduced. The Centrum cards use Z80 microprocessors which preceded the Intel 8080 used in the original IBM XT. The Centrum cards plug into a ISA slot in the motherboard of the computer. They then try to communicate with the CPU by synchronizing clocks. This worked ok with the IBM AT which used an 80486 microprocessor. However, it will not work reliably with a Pentium 1 (or faster) processor. The computer is simply to fast for the Centrum card. This is a very serious problem which can never be solved without a complete re-design of the Centrum boards which isn’t going to happen. If you want to keep a Centrum System running you will have to maintain a supply of old computers.
