On 11/27/25 04:43, andy pugh wrote:
On Thu, 27 Nov 2025 at 04:58, gene heskett <[email protected]> wrote:
But there
was someone asking STG questions here in the last calendar year.
Well remembered. That led me down a path of enquiry to:
https://github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/issues/3263
(Which I had completely forgotten about)
So it seems that the drivers in question haven't been built for a
considerable time, and nobody has complained...
if that pci_8255 was still available, I actually have 3 of them, tried
to write
a driver for them but never completed it. Made in Aussieland and sold at
what should have been around $40/copy in the late 90's. I ordered 3 of them
but by the time Aussie banking and customs got them processed, they
cost me around $120/copy. And were several months en-route.
I think my driver, its been close to 30 years ago now. was able to use
one 8
bit port out of the 3 on each chip and it had 3 8255's on each card.
Had I competed it, I would have had a 72 I/O pin card on each card.
When I decided to to use a pi3b for the Sheldon just to see if I could,
Peter CW had the 7i90, and Bertho had written the rpspi driver, the
rpi3b wasn't quite fast enough so got swapped for an rpi4b when they
came out. That was my 3rd cnc'd machine, and if Peter had more of the
7i90HD and 7i42-TA's I'd toss the old dell's and convert them all to be run
by bananapi-m5's. That later got converted to 42 volt closed loop
stepper/servo's that are magic when compared to regular steppers.
Motors run cold & have never lost home unless pushed into non-movable
objects to test the auto e-stop I've built into the hal file. The shutdown
is quick, run a carbide chip into a chuck jaw, its quick enough the chuck
isn't marked and the carbide chip is not damaged.
That would reduce the power bill for my garage by at least 15 kw a day.
But look at the whole energy picture.
The dell's use about 300 watts each. But the garage I built in 2008 is
far better insulated than my house so that 300W/dell is part of the
heating in cold weather, while the pi & its monitor draws only around
21 W total, but that savings is moot because it would have to be heated
that much more by the two electric heaters set at 700 W each that hold
it to around 72F. Even in sub-zero (F) weather.
So at the end of the day, you are correct Andy. Don't worry about the
ISA stuff.
Cheers, Gene Heskett, CET.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Don't poison our oceans, interdict drugs at the src.
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