ATE life extension using emulated peripheral devices

The old super-minicomputer systems that are tucked away inside many of the world's Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) workstations are often 10 to 30 years old. These sturdy and reliable legacy computers - built in an era when the cost of a system regularly exceeded a half million dollars - tend to run reasonably well and in most cases, spare system parts are still available. One glaring weakness that the majority of these minicomputers share is failing peripheral devices mainly the disk drives and tape drives.