I don't know what you need the Arduino for Greensands? You may have something in mind like GRBL or some other heavy duty code only available via the Arduino libraries. But if not, there are simpler embedded solutions available…
My Mites don't have (or need) an 'IDE' – because they can be programmed directly with the on-board Editor. You just connect your PC to them via a terminal emulator (such as TeraTerm) and a USB/Serial board. So programming & running them from XP really shouldn't be an issue.
You can also plug-in and (re)programme Mites in-situ, which can be very useful for de-bugging projects real time and again your Workshop PC will be fine for this.
Micromite Basic (MMB) will handle most things "out of the box" – features such as RS232, Servos, PWM, A2D, Analog, I2C, SPI, 1-Wire etc are all included within the base MMB language.
Original Micromite Features
Depends on what you want (or need) to do of course. There's been much discussion on the pros & cons of various languages, processors et-al recently – but very often 'simple' is also the easiest thing to do.
Of course, if you need more speed or features there are other hardware choices available to run MMB on, which will provide (for instance) USB connectivity, advanced graphic, LCD/Touch screen capability and on-board SD file storage – support for which is all built-in. Again you can interactively de-bug these systems just by plugging in your PC (remotely via any serial connection if required).
STM32 M4 Cortex system for Micromite Plus
Just a thought.
Regards,
IanT
Edited By IanT on 23/02/2021 18:21:43