The £26 thin client PC proved problematic. To install a Windows OS, I needed a drive to install it from. There were no power connectors to power one. All rather fiddly.
I thought of using my SCPC486 board, but that also needs a fair bit of work to get going.
I decided to buy a small PC with Windows 98 already installed. There were some for £102, but I paid £160 for one that was 40% of the size. Space is scarce in my place! It has an LPT port that is directly accessible with IN and OUT instructions, which is what the Dataman software demands.
It has a single ISA slot.
One minor annoyance is that I can't completely change Windows 98SE language to English. Apparently this can only be fixed by a re-installation, which I cannot do. This problem was fixed in Windows XP but the Dataman software to run this old device programmer does not run on XP. Ach schiesse...