A powerful data acquisition and control system at a very low cost is presented. This is made possible by providing the interfacing hardware and supporting software to integrate the new and low‐cost consumer‐marketed ’’personal computers’’ into a useful and powerful data acquisition system. This system can be configured to the user’s need at any given time, simply by writing the appropriate software. In addition to its computing power, the system has been programmed for use as a transient digitizer–multichannel analyzer with a minimum of 12 &mgr;sec per channel, a data and curve fitter, a generalx‐yrecorder and averager, and a general purpose lab equipment controller. The system developed is, in many respects, at least as powerful as a DEC‐PDP 11/04 system—at a small fraction of the cost.