Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
If you want the ultimate in low writes, install your OS as a 'live' CD image. There are plenty of instructions on doing this with a thumb drive and they apply equally well to an SSD. You can have a separate partition for your data. I ran my network server like that for quite a while. Some distros have an option to save the current RAM drive state on shut down so you only write to the card on shutdown. Windows XP Embedded does something similar. Of course if you have a power failure you lose your recent data. Les On 04/01/2012 17:49, Peter Blodow wrote: I use an 8 GB SSD as a boot device in my ISDN monitor, an old, slowed down Pentium PC. The disc has been created once, and now it only gets written on when a telephone call occurs, maybe a couple of times a day. So I think, I have a reliable storage without moving parts, fans etc. at low power consumption. For other stationary services I would not recommend SSDs. Peter -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
Most of my failures were on Windows but they didn't seem to be related to power fluctuations. The Samsung failed on my Linux server. I reformatted one of the Kingston drives and stuck it in my Linux house computer. It ran for a couple of weeks before trashing the file system. I always get the same symptoms. The drive locks up bringing the OS to it's knees. After a reboot a chunk of the file system is missing. Les On 04/01/12 03:55, Jon Elson wrote: Now, on Windows, I have no confidence whatsoever that bad drives are actually bad at the hardware level. I have had so many people say oh, that power surge blew out my hard drive, when really what happened was the file system got trashed by a power failure at a critical moment. Linux seems to be much more resistant to such problems. Jon -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 01/03/2012 06:36 PM, Les Newell wrote: I have had some bad experiences with SSDs. So far in about 18 months I have killed three in my office computer and one in my network server. Three were Kingston V series and one was a Samsung. I had the same issues with all of them. Initially they worked great but after some months they started locking up when writing to them. After rebooting a chunk of the file system would be missing. I have however had no problems with CF cards. They are slow but I have never had a failure that couldn't be attributed to electrical or physical abuse. I am currently using one in my lathe (running EMC of course) and one in my network server. Both have been in use for a couple of years. You can get SATA CF card adapters if you don't have PATA on the motherboard. Les Les, With all the writes that usually happens to a network server, a SSD is probably a poor choice for that application. Writes to a SSD are what shortens the lifespan. Any of you guys looked at the hybrid drives? Here's one at Newegg - 750 GB 7200 RPM, 32 MB cache with an 8 GB SLC NAND (the SSD portion of the hybrid). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148837 The also have a 500 GB version with 4 Gigs of solid state memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591 Plant your OS partition on the solid state portion, and put all your other partitions that will see lotsa writes on the spinning platter side of the drive. Longer life for the SSD portion of the drive that way. Mark -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 01/03/2012 10:55 PM, Jon Elson wrote: Now, on Windows, I have no confidence whatsoever that bad drives are actually bad at the hardware level. I have had so many people say oh, that power surge blew out my hard drive, when really what happened was the file system got trashed by a power failure at a critical moment. Linux seems to be much more resistant to such problems. Jon Jon, Linux/Unix used to have the same problems. Until they invented journaling. That, in my book, has save a ton of disks for me here at work with cleaning folks accidentally pulling power cords, unexpected power outages over the weekend that fully drain the UPS's, etc. The *nix file systems used to be pretty fragile till journaling came along. Mark -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 01/03/2012 11:48 PM, gene heskett wrote: Can some of that perceived resistance be credited to us linux folks generally being more likely to have a decent UPS that shields our boxes from a lot of that stuff? Add that as a whole I think we pay more attention to surge arrestors and ground bonding than the typical winderz user too. I sure have in here, and I know well that there have been occasions when this whole rooms electronics has bounced 50 kilovolts or more due to a nearby strike. But it all bounces in unison as its all plugged into a single duplex, so there is little if any real voltage between the various pieces in here. I did get a bit of hair re-arranged one night, but my hands were 3 or 4 away from the keyboard so it didn't do anything but jiggle my hair, and the computer just kept on computing. I had some light bulbs to replace in the rest of the house though. But the huge majority of it can be credited to ext3 with journalling enabled I think, and I don't believe that any windows file system has ever grown that ability. At least in the rare instances when I have had to rescue the windows machines in the neighborhood, I have seen zero evidence that it has such. Cheers, Gene Gene, Hadn't seen this post when I posted my previous one, but I think for the reasons you outlined above, especially the journaling, you're spot on. Mark -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 01/04/2012 03:47 AM, Les Newell wrote: Most of my failures were on Windows but they didn't seem to be related to power fluctuations. The Samsung failed on my Linux server. I reformatted one of the Kingston drives and stuck it in my Linux house computer. It ran for a couple of weeks before trashing the file system. I always get the same symptoms. The drive locks up bringing the OS to it's knees. After a reboot a chunk of the file system is missing. Les If you plan on running pure SSD's on Ubuntu, this fella put up a very good write up on extending the life of the SSD (limiting writes), and getting as much performance from them as you can: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11101591postcount=5 Mark -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
2012/1/4 Mark Wendt mark.we...@nrl.navy.mil: If you plan on running pure SSD's on Ubuntu, this fella put up a very good write up on extending the life of the SSD (limiting writes), and getting as much performance from them as you can: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11101591postcount=5 I have been following these suggestions with CF and SSD since my first setup with CF card: disable access time move /tmp to RAM change i/o scheduler to noop move firefox cache to /tmp Thanks for this particular link, because this is first time I see something about disabling journaling in ext4, I will definitely try it out. And this author suggests using deadline as i/o scheduler, in my previous readings I found that noop is suggested. Does anybody have an idea, what is the difference between them? Viesturs -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 01/04/2012 06:13 AM, Viesturs Lācis wrote: 2012/1/4 Mark Wendtmark.we...@nrl.navy.mil: If you plan on running pure SSD's on Ubuntu, this fella put up a very good write up on extending the life of the SSD (limiting writes), and getting as much performance from them as you can: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11101591postcount=5 I have been following these suggestions with CF and SSD since my first setup with CF card: disable access time move /tmp to RAM change i/o scheduler to noop move firefox cache to /tmp Thanks for this particular link, because this is first time I see something about disabling journaling in ext4, I will definitely try it out. And this author suggests using deadline as i/o scheduler, in my previous readings I found that noop is suggested. Does anybody have an idea, what is the difference between them? Viesturs First I'd heard of either one of them. I haven't played around much with SSD's as of yet, but they are starting to get more and more popular here at work, as is Ubuntu as the primary OS. According to the author of that clip, setting noop inthe primary scheduler is better than cfq but you still have some latency in the system when disk writes happen. He doesn't go into any detail on deadline, but I infer from the way he wrote you don't have that same problem when you set the scheduler option to deadline. Here's a good discussion on the differences between the schedulers: http://www.redhat.com/magazine/008jun05/features/schedulers/ It's Redhat, but it still applies. Mark -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
That is a good article. I do most of that apart from changing the I/O scheduler. For reliability I leave journaling on. Les On 04/01/2012 10:54, Mark Wendt wrote: If you plan on running pure SSD's on Ubuntu, this fella put up a very good write up on extending the life of the SSD (limiting writes), and getting as much performance from them as you can: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11101591postcount=5 Mark -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 01/04/2012 06:33 AM, Les Newell wrote: That is a good article. I do most of that apart from changing the I/O scheduler. For reliability I leave journaling on. Les Yep, but the journaling will eventually eat your disk up. It's a trade-off. Longevity of the device vs reliability of the OS. Mark -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
Hi Mark, The SSD on the server is just handling emails and sending out licenses purchased through my web site. I used an SSD to save power as the server runs 24/7. The OS sits on a CF card. Bulk storage is a 1.5TB mechanical drive that is spun down when not in use. In it's current incarnation based on a Wyse R00L thin client running Ubuntu I have total power consumption down to 27W with the main and backup 1.5TB drives spun down, 40W flat out. On my office computer I put the swap file on a mechanical drive to reduce writes. Hybrid drives strike me as being very hard on their flash. They basically use it as a cache for the mechanical part. As far as I know you have no say on what data is stored in flash and what data is stored on disk. Les On 04/01/2012 10:32, Mark Wendt wrote: Les, With all the writes that usually happens to a network server, a SSD is probably a poor choice for that application. Writes to a SSD are what shortens the lifespan. Any of you guys looked at the hybrid drives? Here's one at Newegg - 750 GB 7200 RPM, 32 MB cache with an 8 GB SLC NAND (the SSD portion of the hybrid). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148837 The also have a 500 GB version with 4 Gigs of solid state memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591 Plant your OS partition on the solid state portion, and put all your other partitions that will see lotsa writes on the spinning platter side of the drive. Longer life for the SSD portion of the drive that way. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 01/04/2012 06:38 AM, Les Newell wrote: Hi Mark, The SSD on the server is just handling emails and sending out licenses purchased through my web site. I used an SSD to save power as the server runs 24/7. The OS sits on a CF card. Bulk storage is a 1.5TB mechanical drive that is spun down when not in use. In it's current incarnation based on a Wyse R00L thin client running Ubuntu I have total power consumption down to 27W with the main and backup 1.5TB drives spun down, 40W flat out. On my office computer I put the swap file on a mechanical drive to reduce writes. Hybrid drives strike me as being very hard on their flash. They basically use it as a cache for the mechanical part. As far as I know you have no say on what data is stored in flash and what data is stored on disk. Les According to the blurb, they still have disk cache, albeit much smaller, 32 MB, though I'm not sure how that comes into play if they're using the SLC NAND as a write cache. That's typically what the 32 MB cache is for. At any rate, it might be a good a way to speed up disk I/O, though you obviously don't have the same properties as a full-blown SSD. Mark -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/4/2012 6:41 AM, Mark Wendt wrote: On 01/04/2012 06:33 AM, Les Newell wrote: That is a good article. I do most of that apart from changing the I/O scheduler. For reliability I leave journaling on. Les Yep, but the journaling will eventually eat your disk up. It's a trade-off. Longevity of the device vs reliability of the OS. Mark Gentle persons: There's two different phenomena going on with SSDs. Let's not confuse them. On the one hand, there is the well-known and understood problem that they have limited write endurance. It is easy to compute a useful life knowing your disk usage pattern and taking precautions such those in the referenced article (which info was already covered on our Wiki three years ago thanks to Les, by the way, albeit hidden under Installing to Compact Flash). IMHO this can not be considered a reliability issue. On the other hand, there is the evolving and poorly understood problem of premature failure (e.g., failure well before expected from cycle wear-out or manufacturer's claimed MTTF/MTBF). It is impossible to compute a useful life against these failures, which occur for a variety of reasons. IMHO this is exactly the reliability issue. Again, I recommend reading at least the Tom's Hardware summary http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923-3.html It draws on collected experiences with hundreds and thousands of SSDs. Bottom line for me: I use one for a variety of reasons---size, power, speed, physical toughness---and I take precautions knowing it will inevitably fail before I expect it to. Regards, Kent -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
I use an 8 GB SSD as a boot device in my ISDN monitor, an old, slowed down Pentium PC. The disc has been created once, and now it only gets written on when a telephone call occurs, maybe a couple of times a day. So I think, I have a reliable storage without moving parts, fans etc. at low power consumption. For other stationary services I would not recommend SSDs. Peter Kent A. Reed schrieb: Bottom line for me: I use one for a variety of reasons---size, power, speed, physical toughness---and I take precautions knowing it will inevitably fail before I expect it to. Regards, Kent -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
gene heskett wrote: Can some of that perceived resistance be credited to us linux folks generally being more likely to have a decent UPS that shields our boxes from a lot of that stuff? Nope, no UPSs here or at work. our network switches at work are on UPSs, and maybe the departmental server. I have 2 machines that are on 24/7 here, and a bunch more that are on a lot of the time. Add that as a whole I think we pay more attention to surge arrestors and ground bonding than the typical winderz user too. I sure have in here, and I know well that there have been occasions when this whole rooms electronics has bounced 50 kilovolts or more due to a nearby strike. But it all bounces in unison as its all plugged into a single duplex, so there is little if any real voltage between the various pieces in here. I have wires strung all over the place, network and a home environmental monitoring system. The other computers are all across the shop. I did get a motherboard ethernet jack blown out during a thunderstorm some years ago, that is about it. I did have some interface logic blown out about 25 years ago between two computers that were powered from different outlets. (One ran on 240 V, one on 120 V.) But the huge majority of it can be credited to ext3 with journalling enabled I think, and I don't believe that any windows file system has ever grown that ability. At least in the rare instances when I have had to rescue the windows machines in the neighborhood, I have seen zero evidence that it has such. Yeah, I run Win 2K as a guest OS under VMware, and sometimes after a power failure the Win 2K system won't boot. I have to run the recovery console from the CD and then do chkdsk. Apparently, Win 2K leaves the disk in an intermediate state a fair amount of the time, typical of Microsoft logic. Power failures never happen to our customers. Jon Jon -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
Mark Wendt wrote: Jon, Linux/Unix used to have the same problems. Until they invented journaling. That, in my book, has save a ton of disks for me here at work with cleaning folks accidentally pulling power cords, unexpected power outages over the weekend that fully drain the UPS's, etc. The *nix file systems used to be pretty fragile till journaling came along. Yes, quite true! And, thank GOD for it! Jon -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Wednesday, January 04, 2012 02:45:54 PM Jon Elson did opine: gene heskett wrote: Can some of that perceived resistance be credited to us linux folks generally being more likely to have a decent UPS that shields our boxes from a lot of that stuff? Nope, no UPSs here or at work. our network switches at work are on UPSs, and maybe the departmental server. I have 2 machines that are on 24/7 here, and a bunch more that are on a lot of the time. Add that as a whole I think we pay more attention to surge arrestors and ground bonding than the typical winderz user too. I sure have in here, and I know well that there have been occasions when this whole rooms electronics has bounced 50 kilovolts or more due to a nearby strike. But it all bounces in unison as its all plugged into a single duplex, so there is little if any real voltage between the various pieces in here. I have wires strung all over the place, network and a home environmental monitoring system. The other computers are all across the shop. I did get a motherboard ethernet jack blown out during a thunderstorm some years ago, that is about it. I did have some interface logic blown out about 25 years ago between two computers that were powered from different outlets. (One ran on 240 V, one on 120 V.) But the huge majority of it can be credited to ext3 with journalling enabled I think, and I don't believe that any windows file system has ever grown that ability. At least in the rare instances when I have had to rescue the windows machines in the neighborhood, I have seen zero evidence that it has such. Yeah, I run Win 2K as a guest OS under VMware, and sometimes after a power failure the Win 2K system won't boot. I have to run the recovery console from the CD and then do chkdsk. Apparently, Win 2K leaves the disk in an intermediate state a fair amount of the time, typical of Microsoft logic. Power failures never happen to our customers. Chuckle. Little do they know. Heck, Jon, I have 2 of those cheap electric heaters, one in the garage, and one out in the shop, with digital controls because I've found, like everyone else I suspect, that the heaters with manual dial controls will start sticking on after about a weeks running. These digital things forget their settings in any power failure of more then 3 or 4 cycles duration. I find I have to reset these at least monthly, and often more often than that. Poor maintenance of the substation regulator switches are the cause of 90% of that folderol. Even though it was 14F here last night, with one of those, and a dehumidifier trying to wring a little water out of the low humidity air in the garage, the temp in the garage is above 60F right now. The shop building isn't anything resembling insulated, but one of those digital heaters, set on low speed its minimum of 60F, keeps it well above the dew point in there so my gear doesn't turn bright red with rust. But anybody with a modicum of sense can see that shed has heat, snow on the roof is gone in 24 hours, maybe with 3 diameter icicles hanging on the edges. I have considered building another, this time well insulated, but I don't have the real estate to do that without tearing that one down. Since this one is an overgrown garden shed (12x16 for roof footprint, a hair under 10 feet wide on the floor) it doesn't have enough flooring to tolerate heavy stuff so despite the middle of the floor originally sitting on 5 each 18 square pads, the middle now has about a 5 sag in it after 10 years of holding up a 400 lb jointer a 250 lb bandsaw. There is no way, in this yellow clay soil, to set anything one can call permanent. This house, with a full basement, has I believe shifted upwards, floating if you will, at least 2 in the 22 years I've been here. Either that, or the 'dirt' all around it has settled anywhere from 3 to 12 all around it. Built in 1974, when I moved in in 1989, we still had those corrugated, curved steel window wells around the basements windows on the downhill side, holding back around 8 of this so-called dirt. I took them out 10 years ago, and the 'dirt' is now around 4 to 6 below the bottoms of the windowsills. A 3' wide sidewalk, which came from a poorly paved drive to a 5 foot square front stoop against the front of the house went way out of level to the point of dangerous so we put a 10x26 foot deck over it in about 1999. That fell short of reaching the drive by 11 feet, so when I built the garage in 2008, I extended the garage floor pour to 10 feet out, and along the front of the house about 11 or 12 feet to level that up again, so there is from 6 to 13 of new concrete there, with around 8 new on the garage floor itself. Right over the old carport stuff I probably should have jackhammered out but that would have raised the cement bill another $2200 to reach the grade level I wanted. Then I had the rest of the
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
gene heskett wrote: This house, with a full basement, has I believe shifted upwards, floating if you will, at least 2 in the 22 years I've been here. Well, I guess we have been real lucky here. The shop is in my basement, totally uninsulated except by earth berm. I put exterior foam with stucco on the exposed concrete a few years ago, makes the shop a lot more comfortable to work in. Strangely, it seems to have done nothing for the heating bills. (Although we have never had another $400 bill, so maybe it really IS helping.) There's one water leak where one of those wires that holds the concrete forms through the concrete has rusted out, one of these days I will drill a hole and pack it with JB Weld. It only leaks once a year or so after a big deluge. Jon -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Wednesday, January 04, 2012 08:28:20 PM Jon Elson did opine: gene heskett wrote: This house, with a full basement, has I believe shifted upwards, floating if you will, at least 2 in the 22 years I've been here. Well, I guess we have been real lucky here. The shop is in my basement, totally uninsulated except by earth berm. I put exterior foam with stucco on the exposed concrete a few years ago, makes the shop a lot more comfortable to work in. Strangely, it seems to have done nothing for the heating bills. (Although we have never had another $400 bill, so maybe it really IS helping.) There's one water leak where one of those wires that holds the concrete forms through the concrete has rusted out, one of these days I will drill a hole and pack it with JB Weld. It only leaks once a year or so after a big deluge. Jon I have a similar problem in my basement, Jon. Seems whomever installed the divider walls, put them into the paper thin poured floor with a Remington nailer. But the nails have long since rusted away, so when it rains a real gully washer, we flood via the miniature geysers spitting up from the nail holes. I haven't run into an injector that could drive the holes full of hydraulic cement yet, and of course now after 35 years, the blocks in the wall are slowly being dissolved away at floor level up about 4 feet. Since the only cure for that is to call for a hoe, replace as needed recoat with tar, and backfill again, (bring lots of cash) I believe I'll leave that to whomever the kids sell it to when I'm done with it... In the meantime there are a pair of 72 quart rated dehumidifiers that seem to have actually dried out the dirt a bit as its taking a bigger gully washer to flood us than it used to. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene As the poet said, Only God can make a tree -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. -- Woody Allen -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
2012/1/2 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: I've found a barebones box with a D525 board in it, for $120, claims to have the lpt on the back panel already. Needs a couple sticks of ddr2, a smallish sata drive and a dvd reader. http://www.outletpc.com/rj3658.html $120 kit $ 29 ram $ 80 500G sata3 drive $ 40 laptop style dvd drive, don't see how desktop would fit $ 24 keyboard/mouse with usb rf dongle _ $293 + whatever Looks like it would be a ready to install 10.04 on. What do the folks here think of this kit? It is great, but why do You want that dvd?!? I would recommend purchasing 4GB usb stick for half of the dvd price and keep live-CD install on it. D525 perfectly boots from USB stick and that way You do not have to waste a dvd disk, when new live-CD is created, but simply re-create the usb install. D525 is good for EMC, yesterday I counted that I have used D525 in 4 EMC machines. Latency is good. I must admit that all 4 machines use hardware step generation and thus are not familiar with base-thread, only servo-thread. But one of the machines - the welding robot - is happily running the servo thread at 1,5 kHz update rate with 6 joints and non-trivial kinematics, so there is some load for calculations. I just would like to warn You about using D525 and LPT-based I/O card that requires EPP mode - Intel has screwed it up, I had a very bad experience with 3 D525 boards, other users can report success, so be careful. Viesturs -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tuesday, January 03, 2012 05:06:21 AM Viesturs Lācis did opine: 2012/1/2 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: I've found a barebones box with a D525 board in it, for $120, claims to have the lpt on the back panel already. Needs a couple sticks of ddr2, a smallish sata drive and a dvd reader. http://www.outletpc.com/rj3658.html $120 kit $ 29 ram $ 80 500G sata3 drive $ 40 laptop style dvd drive, don't see how desktop would fit $ 24 keyboard/mouse with usb rf dongle _ $293 + whatever Looks like it would be a ready to install 10.04 on. What do the folks here think of this kit? It is great, but why do You want that dvd?!? For installs, old habits die hard I guess. I would recommend purchasing 4GB usb stick for half of the dvd price and keep live-CD install on it. D525 perfectly boots from USB stick and that way You do not have to waste a dvd disk, when new live-CD is created, but simply re-create the usb install. I do not currently have a machine that can boot from either usb or network, and that includes this $300 Asus mobo with a quad core phenom on it. So ATM, the only universal boot to install method I have is to maintain a working internal optical drive in every box. D525 is good for EMC, yesterday I counted that I have used D525 in 4 EMC machines. Latency is good. I must admit that all 4 machines use hardware step generation and thus are not familiar with base-thread, only servo-thread. But one of the machines - the welding robot - is happily running the servo thread at 1,5 kHz update rate with 6 joints and non-trivial kinematics, so there is some load for calculations. I just would like to warn You about using D525 and LPT-based I/O card that requires EPP mode - Intel has screwed it up, I had a very bad experience with 3 D525 boards, other users can report success, so be careful. I followed that discussion rather closely, but for steppers it doesn't appear that fully working EPP is required. In fact, I have no clue what mode that Startech card I am using so nicely is actually in. I plugged it it, reset the address to 0xd000 out in the .hal file and it Just Works(TM) This current box I run emc on, I left the latency-test running when I went to bed the first time. Amanda has since been fired off and made a level0 backup of the important bits of the install, and that ran the jitter up well past 100 u-secs, 105 TBE. So it doesn't look as if I should be leaving it running a critically busy overnight job. The one job I did have it do overnight involved very slow motions as it ran a diamond wheel just barely touching the teeth of a carbide toothed table saw blade that needed a tuneup. The blade worked well, but I have since found a better one, a CMT branded one with ATBF teeth. Sweet, no burns even in cherry. Cuts take finish directly from the table saw. Thanks Viesturs. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Remember the... the... uhh. -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
2012/1/3 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: I do not currently have a machine that can boot from either usb or network, and that includes this $300 Asus mobo with a quad core phenom on it. So ATM, the only universal boot to install method I have is to maintain a working internal optical drive in every box. I am sure that there is even more universal method, which fits also size-limited situations - You can have one dvd drive for all machines and attach it to particular PC, when necessary. That way You will save on dvd drive cost, space in the case (and case size, if space limit is an issue) and, important for DIY cases, also effort of fitting it nicely in the case. I just would like to warn You about using D525 and LPT-based I/O card that requires EPP mode - Intel has screwed it up, I had a very bad experience with 3 D525 boards, other users can report success, so be careful. I followed that discussion rather closely, but for steppers it doesn't appear that fully working EPP is required. I mean those I/O cards that do hardware step generation and provide more I/O bits than there are LPT pins, like Mesa 7i43 or PicoSystems PPMC. Usual LPT breakout boards that require software step generation do not require EPP, so would work fine. Viesturs -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
2012/1/3 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: On Tuesday, January 03, 2012 06:00:47 AM Viesturs Lācis did opine: 2012/1/3 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: I do not currently have a machine that can boot from either usb or network, and that includes this $300 Asus mobo with a quad core phenom on it. So ATM, the only universal boot to install method I have is to maintain a working internal optical drive in every box. I am sure that there is even more universal method, which fits also size-limited situations - You can have one dvd drive for all machines and attach it to particular PC, when necessary. That way You will save on dvd drive cost, space in the case (and case size, if space limit is an issue) and, important for DIY cases, also effort of fitting it nicely in the case. I have a couple of those 8Gb usbkeys, one of which I wrote an .iso to with dd, which theoretically should work. I could mount the image and read it, but none of my machines have a new enough bios that they could boot from it. I have no idea, what is dd. I think that using System - Administration - Startup disk creator is safer choice. In Lucid it is installed by default. At least I love that tool. It will ask for a destination USB drive and source .iso file and wholaa! It will do all the small things, like creating the boot sector etc. I like that I still can use such a USB drive for storage - I simply copy my files right next to the things that already are there, because the Ubuntu install will use ~1GB. Viesturs -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, Viesturs Lācis wrote: 2012/1/3 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: I do not currently have a machine that can boot from either usb or network, and that includes this $300 Asus mobo with a quad core phenom on it. So ATM, the only universal boot to install method I have is to maintain a working internal optical drive in every box. I am sure that there is even more universal method, which fits also size-limited situations - You can have one dvd drive for all machines and attach it to particular PC, when necessary. That way You will save on dvd drive cost, space in the case (and case size, if space limit is an issue) and, important for DIY cases, also effort of fitting it nicely in the case. I just would like to warn You about using D525 and LPT-based I/O card that requires EPP mode - Intel has screwed it up, I had a very bad experience with 3 D525 boards, other users can report success, so be careful. I followed that discussion rather closely, but for steppers it doesn't appear that fully working EPP is required. I mean those I/O cards that do hardware step generation and provide more I/O bits than there are LPT pins, like Mesa 7i43 or PicoSystems PPMC. Usual LPT breakout boards that require software step generation do not require EPP, so would work fine. As usual I am still quite confused If the Mesa hardware will do the critical work, step generation, why does it matter so much about the motherboard Richard-- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
2012/1/3 kqt4a...@gmail.com: On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, Viesturs Lācis wrote: 2012/1/3 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: I do not currently have a machine that can boot from either usb or network, and that includes this $300 Asus mobo with a quad core phenom on it. So ATM, the only universal boot to install method I have is to maintain a working internal optical drive in every box. I am sure that there is even more universal method, which fits also size-limited situations - You can have one dvd drive for all machines and attach it to particular PC, when necessary. That way You will save on dvd drive cost, space in the case (and case size, if space limit is an issue) and, important for DIY cases, also effort of fitting it nicely in the case. I just would like to warn You about using D525 and LPT-based I/O card that requires EPP mode - Intel has screwed it up, I had a very bad experience with 3 D525 boards, other users can report success, so be careful. I followed that discussion rather closely, but for steppers it doesn't appear that fully working EPP is required. I mean those I/O cards that do hardware step generation and provide more I/O bits than there are LPT pins, like Mesa 7i43 or PicoSystems PPMC. Usual LPT breakout boards that require software step generation do not require EPP, so would work fine. As usual I am still quite confused If the Mesa hardware will do the critical work, step generation, why does it matter so much about the motherboard It does not matter really much. It just happened that there is limited space for motherboard in the cases of machines I have built, so that is why I like using mini-ITX board. And I find D510/525 to be only viable option, because it comes with dual-core CPU and onboard video for incredible price. It requires only 3 additional things: 1) RAM (I use 2GB, so that I can live without swap partition); 2) HDD; 2 machines have SSDs, another 2 have pseudo-SSD drives - compactflash cards in SATA adapter. Both of these things will appreciate as little writes to the drive as possible, so I have no swap partition and also disabled access time writes to hdd; 3) PSU; As calculated by previous posters, the total cost of the PC is very low. Actually I find D525 to be the most cost-efficient way to build _new_ PC for EMC2. And it takes up so little space. In one of machines I managed to use standard ATX case and squeeze in it: 1) D525 board + PSU + CF card in SATA adapter; 2) Mesa 7i43 (to be replaced by 5i23) + 2x 7i39 servo drives 3) DIY optoisolator card 4) 3x Gecko drives 5) 2x 400W AC transformers 6) 2x rectifier bridges with capacitors If I had a chance to fit a VFD in there, I could say that _all_ controls and electronics of the machine are in the usual ATX PC case. What I wanted to say with all this - PC mainboard does not matter that much, but D525 has a lot of advantages, when compared to other options. Viesturs -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, Viesturs Lācis wrote: 2012/1/3 kqt4a...@gmail.com: On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, Viesturs Lācis wrote: 2012/1/3 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: I do not currently have a machine that can boot from either usb or network, and that includes this $300 Asus mobo with a quad core phenom on it. So ATM, the only universal boot to install method I have is to maintain a working internal optical drive in every box. I am sure that there is even more universal method, which fits also size-limited situations - You can have one dvd drive for all machines and attach it to particular PC, when necessary. That way You will save on dvd drive cost, space in the case (and case size, if space limit is an issue) and, important for DIY cases, also effort of fitting it nicely in the case. I just would like to warn You about using D525 and LPT-based I/O card that requires EPP mode - Intel has screwed it up, I had a very bad experience with 3 D525 boards, other users can report success, so be careful. I followed that discussion rather closely, but for steppers it doesn't appear that fully working EPP is required. I mean those I/O cards that do hardware step generation and provide more I/O bits than there are LPT pins, like Mesa 7i43 or PicoSystems PPMC. Usual LPT breakout boards that require software step generation do not require EPP, so would work fine. As usual I am still quite confused If the Mesa hardware will do the critical work, step generation, why does it matter so much about the motherboard It does not matter really much. It just happened that there is limited space for motherboard in the cases of machines I have built, so that is why I like using mini-ITX board. And I find D510/525 to be only viable option, because it comes with dual-core CPU and onboard video for incredible price. It requires only 3 additional things: 1) RAM (I use 2GB, so that I can live without swap partition); 2) HDD; 2 machines have SSDs, another 2 have pseudo-SSD drives - compactflash cards in SATA adapter. Both of these things will appreciate as little writes to the drive as possible, so I have no swap partition and also disabled access time writes to hdd; 3) PSU; As calculated by previous posters, the total cost of the PC is very low. Actually I find D525 to be the most cost-efficient way to build _new_ PC for EMC2. And it takes up so little space. In one of machines I managed to use standard ATX case and squeeze in it: 1) D525 board + PSU + CF card in SATA adapter; 2) Mesa 7i43 (to be replaced by 5i23) + 2x 7i39 servo drives 3) DIY optoisolator card 4) 3x Gecko drives 5) 2x 400W AC transformers 6) 2x rectifier bridges with capacitors If I had a chance to fit a VFD in there, I could say that _all_ controls and electronics of the machine are in the usual ATX PC case. What I wanted to say with all this - PC mainboard does not matter that much, but D525 has a lot of advantages, when compared to other options. If I were wanting to build a new pc I would agree but I would like to improve the reliability of a decent machine I occasionally get rtai errors Will the Mesa hardware do this I have only stepper motors Richard-- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 3 January 2012 12:49, kqt4a...@gmail.com wrote: If I were wanting to build a new pc I would agree but I would like to improve the reliability of a decent machine I occasionally get rtai errors Will the Mesa hardware do this I have only stepper motors With Mesa/Pico cards you don't need the base thread, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't get troublesome delays in the servo thread. (though they will be a much smaller percentage of the thread period) You will, however, gain a lot more io pins, and a much lower granularity in step timings, which might lead to improved performance. -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
2012/1/3 andy pugh bodge...@gmail.com: On 3 January 2012 12:49, kqt4a...@gmail.com wrote: If I were wanting to build a new pc I would agree but I would like to improve the reliability of a decent machine I occasionally get rtai errors Will the Mesa hardware do this I have only stepper motors With Mesa/Pico cards you don't need the base thread, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't get troublesome delays in the servo thread. (though they will be a much smaller percentage of the thread period) You will, however, gain a lot more io pins, and a much lower granularity in step timings, which might lead to improved performance. Yupp, exactly! It will take off some load from Your PC, but it cannot be determined, if it will be enough to avoid rtai errors. Viesturs -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
If you read the error carefully you will notice that you only get the error popup once per session even if you are getting millions of excessive delays... John On 1/3/2012 6:59 AM, Viesturs Lācis wrote: 2012/1/3 andy pughbodge...@gmail.com: On 3 January 2012 12:49,kqt4a...@gmail.com wrote: If I were wanting to build a new pc I would agree but I would like to improve the reliability of a decent machine I occasionally get rtai errors Will the Mesa hardware do this I have only stepper motors With Mesa/Pico cards you don't need the base thread, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't get troublesome delays in the servo thread. (though they will be a much smaller percentage of the thread period) You will, however, gain a lot more io pins, and a much lower granularity in step timings, which might lead to improved performance. Yupp, exactly! It will take off some load from Your PC, but it cannot be determined, if it will be enough to avoid rtai errors. Viesturs -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
Is mesanet.com the only source for the mesa hardware Richard -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 3 January 2012 14:30, kqt4a...@gmail.com wrote: Is mesanet.com the only source for the mesa hardware it appears that www.cnc-ready.at no longer exists. http://www.duzi.cz/shop_cnc/ still works though. -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
2012/1/3 andy pugh bodge...@gmail.com: On 3 January 2012 14:30, kqt4a...@gmail.com wrote: Is mesanet.com the only source for the mesa hardware it appears that www.cnc-ready.at no longer exists. http://www.duzi.cz/shop_cnc/ still works though. Martin Duzi is their dealer in EU. If You are non-EU resident, then You are going to suffer from taxes and duties (unless buying as a business, that is a registered as VAT applicable entity in Your country). You can always write an email to sa...@mesanet.com to ask for a closest dealer to Your location. Viesturs -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tue, 2012-01-03 at 13:49 +0200, Viesturs Lācis wrote: ... snip I have no idea, what is dd. dd is a Linux utility that does a direct copy from one stream to another (?). I just learned to use it to duplicate a hard drive by copying bit for bit from the original drive to the new drive. By having an exact copy with the same bits occupying the same locations on the drive, boot configuration, file systems and all else is duplicated. dd is a wonderful thing, when used properly. I've used it in the past to wipe out MBR's to upgrade hard drives from Windows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_%28Unix%29 By the way, if the destination hard drive is larger than the original, a partition editor can be used to make the copied partition larger, for instance to fill the rest of the drive space. I think that using System - Administration - Startup disk creator is safer choice. In Lucid it is installed by default. At least I love that tool. It will ask for a destination USB drive and source .iso file and wholaa! It will do all the small things, like creating the boot sector etc. I like that I still can use such a USB drive for storage - I simply copy my files right next to the things that already are there, because the Ubuntu install will use ~1GB. Viesturs I don't recall .iso's being bootable. The .iso contains an image of a bootable file system, but in the form of a single file. As far as I know, the .iso needs to be decompressed with a utility to make a bootable file system. usb-creator-gtk is commonly on our Ubuntu machines, and allows one to create a bootable USB thumb drive from an .iso file: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Live_USB_creator -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tuesday, January 03, 2012 11:14:42 AM Viesturs Lācis did opine: 2012/1/3 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: On Tuesday, January 03, 2012 06:00:47 AM Viesturs Lؤپcis did opine: 2012/1/3 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: I do not currently have a machine that can boot from either usb or network, and that includes this $300 Asus mobo with a quad core phenom on it. آ So ATM, the only universal boot to install method I have is to maintain a working internal optical drive in every box. I am sure that there is even more universal method, which fits also size-limited situations - You can have one dvd drive for all machines and attach it to particular PC, when necessary. That way You will save on dvd drive cost, space in the case (and case size, if space limit is an issue) and, important for DIY cases, also effort of fitting it nicely in the case. I have a couple of those 8Gb usbkeys, one of which I wrote an .iso to with dd, which theoretically should work. آ I could mount the image and read it, but none of my machines have a new enough bios that they could boot from it. I have no idea, what is dd. I think that using System - Administration - Startup disk creator is safer choice. Might be. dd is the exact copier of the whole device. An .iso is supposed to be the byte for byte image of the device. dd has no knowledge of burn power so it can only read an optical device. I can write an install iso to one of those 8Gb keys using dd, then mount it and access it, for read only if I want and other than the key's read response being a little faster initially, there is little if any other detectable difference when reading. I would say read/write, but when a device is mounted using the iso9660 file system, that file system, originally made for data cd's, doesn't have (I assume since that is normally read only media) a write capability. That is why we use a system that writes the whole disk at once, or at best can append to the image that is there when in multisession mode, a horrible kludge that usually destroys the ability to read the first session. This is an un-avoidable artifact of the fact that optical media doesn't have tracks or cylinders in its makeup, but is just one long track, identified by a sector header inserted between every 2048 bytes of data in one long spiral track. One LSN identifier, so when you ask to read a certain file, it first scans the inside of the disk to find the LSN of the desired file, then skips the head across the disc until it reads one of those headers and figures out if it has to skip outward or inward using a successive approximation until it is a few turns in front of that LSN, starts tracking gives you the file when it arrives. That is why seek times are so slow for optical media. No doubt the startup disk creator could do it too. But dd and its ilk have been around for most of the life of Unix. An old, familiar tool that to do it on windows requires Nortons Ghost, also requires the correct options set. I rather like the *nix attitude that a utility should do one thing, and do that one thing the best way it can be done. dd is a do one thing well utility. This pclos install does not have that 'disk creator' in its menu's, but does have K3b, the swiss army knife of such utilities for optical media. That K3b is of course just a pretty gui face for all the command line based utilities that actually do the ditch digging, exactly as I expect your disk creator actually is down where the rubber meets the dirt. Usually, its growisofs that does the deed. :) In Lucid it is installed by default. At least I love that tool. It will ask for a destination USB drive and source .iso file and wholaa! It will do all the small things, like creating the boot sector etc. I like that I still can use such a USB drive for storage - I simply copy my files right next to the things that already are there, because the Ubuntu install will use ~1GB. Viesturs Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from? -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tuesday, January 03, 2012 12:00:18 PM kqt4a...@gmail.com did opine: On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, Viesturs Lؤپcis wrote: 2012/1/3 gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com: I do not currently have a machine that can boot from either usb or network, and that includes this $300 Asus mobo with a quad core phenom on it. آ So ATM, the only universal boot to install method I have is to maintain a working internal optical drive in every box. I am sure that there is even more universal method, which fits also size-limited situations - You can have one dvd drive for all machines and attach it to particular PC, when necessary. That way You will save on dvd drive cost, space in the case (and case size, if space limit is an issue) and, important for DIY cases, also effort of fitting it nicely in the case. I just would like to warn You about using D525 and LPT-based I/O card that requires EPP mode - Intel has screwed it up, I had a very bad experience with 3 D525 boards, other users can report success, so be careful. I followed that discussion rather closely, but for steppers it doesn't appear that fully working EPP is required. I mean those I/O cards that do hardware step generation and provide more I/O bits than there are LPT pins, like Mesa 7i43 or PicoSystems PPMC. Usual LPT breakout boards that require software step generation do not require EPP, so would work fine. As usual I am still quite confused If the Mesa hardware will do the critical work, step generation, why does it matter so much about the motherboard Richard I believe that without the full EPP in effect, the port has some pins that are write only, and some that read only. IIRC the readable pins in the other modes only add up to 5 (a normal printers status bits), but I'd expect the mesa boards need a full 8 bits going both ways, and only the EPP mode can do that. Peter W. can clarify that if I'm full of it since IIRC those boards are his. :) Better it comes straight from the person who knows for sure. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene The eyes of taxes are upon you. -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tuesday, January 03, 2012 12:10:31 PM kqt4a...@gmail.com did opine: [...] controls and electronics of the machine are in the usual ATX PC case. What I wanted to say with all this - PC mainboard does not matter that much, but D525 has a lot of advantages, when compared to other options. If I were wanting to build a new pc I would agree but I would like to improve the reliability of a decent machine I occasionally get rtai errors Will the Mesa hardware do this I have only stepper motors Richard Your decent machine for this service s/b its latency-test results, very little else counts if those aren't usable. I have been fairly well educated in just the differences a video card can make in those figures, and what may be a decent machine for the kids to play Doom on, can be a far cry indeed from decent for emc. And building one of these is a piece of cake as long as your screwdriver bit is fresh. That said, mine made it to 6:26 this morning before it went away again, and when it did it left both gkrellm and latency-test images on my screen here, and gkrellm was showing the 5 volts at 4.92, usable about 2 seconds before it crashed. So I, while having a spare psu that is better, will probably order a couple of those kits using the D525 boards in the next day or so, I am tired of screwing with this 'regular pc' format and its annual replacement of many of its internal pieces, like the psu optical drive. A cpu that is faster, only uses 14 watts needs no fans that fail is very appealing to me. Technology moves on as it always will, and gets cheaper, as it always will, although cheaper reminds me of that old saw about cheap, good, and fast, pick any 2. So I may as well try to keep up, even at my age. You all have said the SSD's are the way to go, so I'll probably pop for the 8Gb or 16Gb version of those, but I'd need advice on brands models to be assured of decent life. ISTR the present install is using about 4.3Gb of a 46Gb drive I've had for yonks but seems dead reliable yet. But its a pata interface that may not be available on the D525's. Since I do daily backups that's a shrug. An enterprising neighborhood teenage girl just came by and cleared quite a bit of the 7 or 8 of snow we got last night from the deck, Dee's car and the drive behind it, so that's taken care of for a bit, but doesn't get me to the shop just yet. First, I need to figure out where my giddy-up-go went, it seems to have left without me this morning. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
As usual I am still quite confused If the Mesa hardware will do the critical work, step generation, why does it matter so much about the motherboard Richard I believe that without the full EPP in effect, the port has some pins that are write only, and some that read only. IIRC the readable pins in the other modes only add up to 5 (a normal printers status bits), but I'd expect the mesa boards need a full 8 bits going both ways, and only the EPP mode can do that. Peter W. can clarify that if I'm full of it since IIRC those boards are his. :) Better it comes straight from the person who knows for sure. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene The eyes of taxes are upon you. Yes when EPP mode is used for communicating with smart peripherals (like Mesa or Pico) it is used as a bidirectional 8 bit data/address bus. Other modes can do this (the so called PS2 mode can) but EPP mode has built in strobe generation and handshaking so is much faster for data transfer than PS2 mode (and much simpler than ECP mode). To add to the confusion sometimes EPP mode is suggested for software step setups, The reason being that some parallel ports change the I/O mode of some pins from open drain with a pullup to push-pull when in EPP mode VS SPP or PS2 mode. If the pin needs to source current to drive an OPTO this may be neccesary. -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users Peter Wallace Mesa Electronics (\__/) (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your ()_() signature to help him gain world domination. -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tuesday, January 03, 2012 01:44:42 PM gene heskett did opine: http://www.directron.com/extremevalue.html I just bought one of these. Genuine Intel board, but Not fanless but 2G of ram a 250Gb HD 300 watt supply, $246 shipped. It's in Houston, he wanted some of my snow, said he was 80 behind. :) So the bet has been placed. :) I only bought one because its a test of the mobo and has everything else is about the same, in a bigger than atom sized box. But I'd bet the psu is a special physically. That always means 3x higher replacement costs. :( Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory... -- Larry Wall -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
Kent A. Reed wrote: On 1/2/2012 10:35 PM, Jon Elson wrote: gene heskett wrote: Is anyone running emc on this? How is the latency? I've tested the Intel D525MW motherboard, and put it in the database. The servo thread jitter was 15595, the base thread was 11921. That is fine for any system with a hardware interface (servo or stepper) but may be a little marginal for software step generation. Since I'm a servo bigot, it was quite good for me. The on-board parallel port passed all the tests with my EPP devices. EMC 2.4.x with Ubuntu 10.04 loads and runs with no quirks at all. I did the install on a 16 GB SSD hard drive. Jon Jon: This is a multi-cpu board. Did you set the isolcpus boot parameter? No, I did not. But, these numbers are just FINE with hardware assist, which all my systems have. The reason I ask is IIRC I got similar numbers with a standard boot from the LiveCD on my ASUS board and saw them drop below 1 when I set isolcpus=1. This may be a false memory (I did the tests last winter) and I'm away from the board at the moment. I'll do the tests again in the morning and this time I'll post the results on the Wiki. No, I will bet you are right. Jon -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
I have had some bad experiences with SSDs. So far in about 18 months I have killed three in my office computer and one in my network server. Three were Kingston V series and one was a Samsung. I had the same issues with all of them. Initially they worked great but after some months they started locking up when writing to them. After rebooting a chunk of the file system would be missing. I have however had no problems with CF cards. They are slow but I have never had a failure that couldn't be attributed to electrical or physical abuse. I am currently using one in my lathe (running EMC of course) and one in my network server. Both have been in use for a couple of years. You can get SATA CF card adapters if you don't have PATA on the motherboard. Les On 03/01/12 17:42, gene heskett wrote: You all have said the SSD's are the way to go, so I'll probably pop for the 8Gb or 16Gb version of those, but I'd need advice on brands models to be assured of decent life. ISTR the present install is using about 4.3Gb of a 46Gb drive I've had for yonks but seems dead reliable yet. But its a pata interface that may not be available on the D525's. Since I do daily backups that's a shrug. -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/3/2012 6:36 PM, Les Newell wrote: I have had some bad experiences with SSDs. So far in about 18 months I have killed three in my office computer and one in my network server. Three were Kingston V series and one was a Samsung. I had the same issues with all of them. Initially they worked great but after some months they started locking up when writing to them. After rebooting a chunk of the file system would be missing. I have however had no problems with CF cards. They are slow but I have never had a failure that couldn't be attributed to electrical or physical abuse. I am currently using one in my lathe (running EMC of course) and one in my network server. Both have been in use for a couple of years. You can get SATA CF card adapters if you don't have PATA on the motherboard. Les On 03/01/12 17:42, gene heskett wrote: You all have said the SSD's are the way to go, so I'll probably pop for the 8Gb or 16Gb version of those, but I'd need advice on brands models to be assured of decent life. ISTR the present install is using about 4.3Gb of a 46Gb drive I've had for yonks but seems dead reliable yet. But its a pata interface that may not be available on the D525's. Since I do daily backups that's a shrug. The jury still seems to be out on the question of SSD reliability, partly because there are so few data points compared to rotating disks. Tom's Hardware did a decent job summarizing various reports back in July(?). There's no argument SSDs are fast but no one (except the vendors, that is) is willing to bet on their longevity. Worse, SSDs seem to fail without any ability to recover and they seem to without warning (SMART seems useless as an early warning technology). I use a cheap 30GB SSD as my boot and system device but I make sure it's totally backed up for easy replacement when (not if) it fails. Regards, Kent -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
To all, For what it's worth I have been using 4GB SATA Flash Vertical Disk On Modules (SATADOM) in my CNC mill for a couple years without a problem. It only has EMC2 and my G-code files on it. I also have been using them on other machines for a shorter time period but also without problems. For their size they are not cheap: $75 for 4GB but so far they have been bullet proof and don't need a data cable (power only). Jim -Original Message- From: Kent A. Reed [mailto:knbr...@erols.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2012 6:27 PM To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) Subject: Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down On 1/3/2012 6:36 PM, Les Newell wrote: I have had some bad experiences with SSDs. So far in about 18 months I have killed three in my office computer and one in my network server. Three were Kingston V series and one was a Samsung. I had the same issues with all of them. Initially they worked great but after some months they started locking up when writing to them. After rebooting a chunk of the file system would be missing. I have however had no problems with CF cards. They are slow but I have never had a failure that couldn't be attributed to electrical or physical abuse. I am currently using one in my lathe (running EMC of course) and one in my network server. Both have been in use for a couple of years. You can get SATA CF card adapters if you don't have PATA on the motherboard. Les On 03/01/12 17:42, gene heskett wrote: You all have said the SSD's are the way to go, so I'll probably pop for the 8Gb or 16Gb version of those, but I'd need advice on brands models to be assured of decent life. ISTR the present install is using about 4.3Gb of a 46Gb drive I've had for yonks but seems dead reliable yet. But its a pata interface that may not be available on the D525's. Since I do daily backups that's a shrug. The jury still seems to be out on the question of SSD reliability, partly because there are so few data points compared to rotating disks. Tom's Hardware did a decent job summarizing various reports back in July(?). There's no argument SSDs are fast but no one (except the vendors, that is) is willing to bet on their longevity. Worse, SSDs seem to fail without any ability to recover and they seem to without warning (SMART seems useless as an early warning technology). I use a cheap 30GB SSD as my boot and system device but I make sure it's totally backed up for easy replacement when (not if) it fails. Regards, Kent -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users This communication is for the use of the intended recipient only. It may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If you are not the intended recipient of this communication, the disclosure, copying, distribution or use hereof is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please advise me by return e-mail or by telephone and then delete it immediately. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
Kirk Wallace wrote: On Tue, 2012-01-03 at 19:26 -0500, Kent A. Reed wrote: ... snip The jury still seems to be out on the question of SSD reliability, partly because there are so few data points compared to rotating disks. ... snip I just replaced a friend's Samsung 60GB SSD. It stopped booting Windows XP. I did a Windows check disk and it was able to recover the drive, then Linux dd to a new hard disk, and she's back in business. As soon as the new hard drive is broken in, I'll try to stress test the SSD to see what's up. I have no idea how long the drive was working, I'm guessing a couple of years. I prefer the older technology, and maybe save some money to put into a RAID or decent backup. Now, on Windows, I have no confidence whatsoever that bad drives are actually bad at the hardware level. I have had so many people say oh, that power surge blew out my hard drive, when really what happened was the file system got trashed by a power failure at a critical moment. Linux seems to be much more resistant to such problems. Jon -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tuesday, January 03, 2012 10:58:17 PM Kirk Wallace did opine: On Tue, 2012-01-03 at 19:26 -0500, Kent A. Reed wrote: ... snip The jury still seems to be out on the question of SSD reliability, partly because there are so few data points compared to rotating disks. ... snip I just replaced a friend's Samsung 60GB SSD. It stopped booting Windows XP. I did a Windows check disk and it was able to recover the drive, then Linux dd to a new hard disk, and she's back in business. As soon as the new hard drive is broken in, I'll try to stress test the SSD to see what's up. I have no idea how long the drive was working, I'm guessing a couple of years. I prefer the older technology, and maybe save some money to put into a RAID or decent backup. How long a drive with mechanicals in it lasts is often a crap shoot. I've had several in the 60-500 gig range that have fallen over in what I'd call premature spin times, some in under 6 months, and this is drives with well under 50 power cycles on them. Around me they spin up and generally don't get spun down unless there is a power failure that outlasts my UPS. I do not power down just for the heck of it, I even swapped out my bad dvd drive last night without a powerdown. But I have to get rid of the rest of those red sata cables. That red die eats the copper wire inside the cable like it was battery acid, and has been doing that to cables around me since the rollover to the '70's took all that cable manufacturing first to the J. A. Pan company and eventually to China. 3 years and the copper in a wire with that insulation can be shook out of the end of the insulation as brown dust. I have 5 dead sata cables hanging on a drawer knob behind me just to keep me reminded, and I grab cables of other colors when I can just so I have spares on hand. Right now, I have a pair of the original 3.5 Seagate hawks, a whole gigabyte each, scsi-ii hooked up to a trs-80 Color Computer 3 in the basement. Either of those drives has accumulated 15 + years of spin time, and are apparently as good as ever. Those were $300 drives when they were new and I put them into a full house Amiga 2k, with 64 megs of ram a PPS 68040 accelerator card in it plus a good sized wagonload of other goodies. If and when the last one dies, I'll sell the rest of it on the coco mailing list, but I'll shed a tear when I do, that was the original machine that could do anything, and taught me an awful lot of what I know about computers. I once put a coco-2 into the tv station as a substitute for a 20,000$ bit of Grass Valley gear, imitating the E-DISK storage for a 300-3A/B production switcher using software I wrote. 4x faster than the GVG package gave english filenames to the Tech directors which pleased them no end. With a couple of disk controller failures, it otherwise sat there and did its thing for 13 years. They retired that switcher when I retired, nobody else could fix it, and gave me that kit back a couple of months later, so that is now another coco I have stashed in the basement. In fact, I think I am coco poor. ;-) So now I'm waiting on Houston and the new atom machine. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene C makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes that harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg. -- Bjarne Stroustrup -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Tuesday, January 03, 2012 11:33:10 PM Jon Elson did opine: Kirk Wallace wrote: On Tue, 2012-01-03 at 19:26 -0500, Kent A. Reed wrote: ... snip The jury still seems to be out on the question of SSD reliability, partly because there are so few data points compared to rotating disks. ... snip I just replaced a friend's Samsung 60GB SSD. It stopped booting Windows XP. I did a Windows check disk and it was able to recover the drive, then Linux dd to a new hard disk, and she's back in business. As soon as the new hard drive is broken in, I'll try to stress test the SSD to see what's up. I have no idea how long the drive was working, I'm guessing a couple of years. I prefer the older technology, and maybe save some money to put into a RAID or decent backup. Now, on Windows, I have no confidence whatsoever that bad drives are actually bad at the hardware level. I have had so many people say oh, that power surge blew out my hard drive, when really what happened was the file system got trashed by a power failure at a critical moment. Linux seems to be much more resistant to such problems. Jon Can some of that perceived resistance be credited to us linux folks generally being more likely to have a decent UPS that shields our boxes from a lot of that stuff? Add that as a whole I think we pay more attention to surge arrestors and ground bonding than the typical winderz user too. I sure have in here, and I know well that there have been occasions when this whole rooms electronics has bounced 50 kilovolts or more due to a nearby strike. But it all bounces in unison as its all plugged into a single duplex, so there is little if any real voltage between the various pieces in here. I did get a bit of hair re-arranged one night, but my hands were 3 or 4 away from the keyboard so it didn't do anything but jiggle my hair, and the computer just kept on computing. I had some light bulbs to replace in the rest of the house though. But the huge majority of it can be credited to ext3 with journalling enabled I think, and I don't believe that any windows file system has ever grown that ability. At least in the rare instances when I have had to rescue the windows machines in the neighborhood, I have seen zero evidence that it has such. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Oblivion together does not frighten me, beloved. -- Thalassa (in Anne Mulhall's body), Return to Tomorrow, stardate 4770.3. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/2/2012 12:13 AM, Kent A. Reed wrote: As for debugging your hal file, that's the problem I was working on in the fall with my attempts to graph the hal network. The feedback I got here suggested my approach wasn't lighting anyone's fire, but my wife's health has taken a big nose dive (I just retrieved her from an outrageous neuro-surgical procedure that has her head and spine held together with titanium plate, rods, and screws) so I'm unlikely to be working on my hal graphing script or anything else related to EMC2---indefinitely. Here's hoping 2012 will be better. Regards, Kent Kent, I'm very sorry to hear about your wife. Prayers and best wishes to a speedy recovery for her. I can't imagine what she's going through with all that. Please give her our best, and also for you too, as you cope with your wife's pain and suffering. And indeed hoping for a better 2012 for you and your family. Mark -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/2/2012 12:13 AM, Kent A. Reed wrote: On 1/1/2012 8:41 PM, gene heskett wrote: ... Thanks guys sending wishes for Happy Prosperous New Year to all. Further thought: How do you folks arrive at those logic diagrams shown at several locations in the Integrators Manual I just printed fresh last Thursday? It seems to me that graphing utility could be useful in spotting what I so nicely screwed up. :) Cheers Thanks, Gene Be specific to be terrific is my wife's motto. Do you mean diagrams such as Figure 8.3 Step Pulse Generator Block Diagram in the EMC2 v2.4 Integrators Manual? I didn't make that diagram but I think Dia could get you most of the way there with the symbols on several sheets (see the Cybernetics sheet, for example). It's not my favorite graphing tool but it's serviceable. As for debugging your hal file, that's the problem I was working on in the fall with my attempts to graph the hal network. The feedback I got here suggested my approach wasn't lighting anyone's fire, but my wife's health has taken a big nose dive (I just retrieved her from an outrageous neuro-surgical procedure that has her head and spine held together with titanium plate, rods, and screws) so I'm unlikely to be working on my hal graphing script or anything else related to EMC2---indefinitely. Here's hoping 2012 will be better. Regards, Kent That is a rough start for the new year Kent. Hang in there and do somethings for yourself so you can keep yourself intact. My wife has had some serious hospital time over the last 3 years. (I've lost count of the days..) I talked with a distant friend of mine recently and he told me he spent 16 days in the hospital this year trying to keep his heart in time.. Geez We used to ride a hundred miles per day on bikes when we were younger! Getting older sucks. Many hospitals have Wifi throughout the facilities now.. I'm just saying. ;-) Good Luck and thanks for everything you have done. Dave -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Mon, 2012-01-02 at 02:11 -0500, gene heskett wrote: ... snip As for debugging your hal file, that's the problem I was working on in the fall with my attempts to graph the hal network. The feedback I got here suggested my approach wasn't lighting anyone's fire, I hope it didn't come from me! I was hoping to get something done with diagramming HAL with gEDA, but I'm taking care of my bed ridden mother now. but my wife's health has taken a big nose dive (I just retrieved her from an outrageous neuro-surgical procedure that has her head and spine held together with titanium plate, rods, and screws) so I'm unlikely to be working on my hal graphing script or anything else related to EMC2---indefinitely. OMG! Obviously. And my sympathies Kent, our ladies always come first. Mine has COPD. I assume that this not exactly a temporary condition when they have to do that extreme a procedure. I wish her the very best. Here's hoping 2012 will be better. Amen! Regards, Kent Cheers Kent, Gene I am hopping for a better 2012 too, and wishing for a speedy recovery to all those on the mend. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 12:44:51 PM Kirk Wallace did opine: On Mon, 2012-01-02 at 02:11 -0500, gene heskett wrote: ... snip As for debugging your hal file, that's the problem I was working on in the fall with my attempts to graph the hal network. The feedback I got here suggested my approach wasn't lighting anyone's fire, I hope it didn't come from me! I was hoping to get something done with diagramming HAL with gEDA, What I was hoping for (yeah, I know, silly boy...) was something that could recursively scan a directories *.hal file, drawing the connections, until it made a scan with no more hits, then spit out whats left as errors or missing, whatever. but I'm taking care of my bed ridden mother now. And that too obviously comes _first_, fully understood, Kirk. And I may owe some apologies here and there. I am in the somewhat rare situation of having looked at the x-rays and understanding that what I saw was a death sentence for Annie without the neurosurgeon (and a friend of mine already) having to elaborate other than saying the damage was done even if he could reach the location to remove the blood clot. Middle cerebral artery, left side she was right handed. And I have since buried the two girls she gave me, throat and stomach cancer. So I may be a bit inured to the passing of those I love the most. I can of course try to put myself in your shoes shed a few tears, I seem to do that well. I have even asked myself why am I still here, but I'm not smart enough to answer me. Now of course I have an Alberta Clipper bearing down on me with a foot of snow forecast. Very minor detail compared to this. With regard to a bad hal file killing the machine, I am now beginning to lean toward a flaky psu, its not liking 50F ambient temps in the shop, and has crashed with grand and goriously colored confetti on the screen within 20 minutes of the last 3, fully powered down reboots. gkrellm says the 5 volt line is sagging and I say 4.87 volts once. That psu is about a year old. I have a 2 or 3 year old HiPro that is a tad undersized in this box, still holding its 5 volt line at 5.05. But nobody has any more HiPro's. All the rest seem engineered to sag go out of tolerance about 2 weeks after the end of the warraty, worst offenders are Antec. Maybe I'll even buy a whole new box. If I could find one of those compact models with a usable parport no built in video. Is anyone actually selling that intel board that has been discussed here in a ready to go package? I'd drop the card for one of those in a heartbeat. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is... If they do foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little. -- Joe Martin -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 01:47:39 PM gene heskett did opine: [...] With regard to a bad hal file killing the machine, I am now beginning to lean toward a flaky psu, its not liking 50F ambient temps in the shop, and has crashed with grand and goriously colored confetti on the screen within 20 minutes of the last 3, fully powered down reboots. gkrellm says the 5 volt line is sagging and I say 4.87 volts once. That psu is about a year old. I have a 2 or 3 year old HiPro that is a tad undersized in this box, still holding its 5 volt line at 5.05. But nobody has any more HiPro's. All the rest seem engineered to sag go out of tolerance about 2 weeks after the end of the warraty, worst offenders are Antec. Maybe I'll even buy a whole new box. If I could find one of those compact models with a usable parport no built in video. Is anyone actually selling that intel board that has been discussed here in a ready to go package? I'd drop the card for one of those in a heartbeat. I've found a barebones box with a D525 board in it, for $120, claims to have the lpt on the back panel already. Needs a couple sticks of ddr2, a smallish sata drive and a dvd reader. http://www.outletpc.com/rj3658.html $120 kit $ 29 ram $ 80 500G sata3 drive $ 40 laptop style dvd drive, don't see how desktop would fit $ 24 keyboard/mouse with usb rf dongle _ $293 + whatever Looks like it would be a ready to install 10.04 on. What do the folks here think of this kit? Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot? -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:07:53 PM Kenneth Lerman did opine: On 1/2/2012 1:16 PM, gene heskett wrote: lots of stuff snipped Maybe I'll even buy a whole new box. If I could find one of those compact models with a usable parport no built in video. Is anyone actually selling that intel board that has been discussed here in a ready to go package? I'd drop the card for one of those in a heartbeat. Cheers, Gene Mini-box has... Item QuantityDescription RateAmount Tax Options 160GB 2.5 SATA HDD 1 160GB 2.5 SATA HDD 45.00 45.00 Yes MEM-SO-DDR3-2GB 1 MEM-SO-DDR3-2GB 30.00 30.00 Yes ENC-M350-PWR 1 M350 Enclosure WITH PICOPSU-80 and 60W ADAPTER KIT 69.00 69.00 Yes MBD-I-D525MWV 1 D525MWV Mini-ITX Motherboard85.00 85.00 Yes CAB-P4-POWER-MINI 1 4-Pin P4 Mini Power Cable 1.25 1.25Yes Subtotal 230.25 Shipping Cost (UPSGR) 13.22 Total $243.47 Does that include the lpt breakout kit? And is it time I bought a portable dvd writer that plugs into a usb port to do installs such with? Will it boot from a usb dvd drive? I just ordered another one of these -- although the disk price has increased slightly, it is still around $250. Disks are hens teeth ATM, although I hear production is ramping back up after the tsunami now. That will be the third such machine I have. It does have built-in video, but you don't have to use it. It's a nice little package that runs without a fan. Don't forget to order the power cable that is needed to connect the power supply to the motherboard. (I forgot to do this on my first order and got an email telling me that it was needed.) You DO have to assemble it yourself, but that's pretty easy. NOTE -- I am not running EMC on this -- But I am running my phone system on one. Regards, Ken Is anyone running emc on this? How is the latency? Thanks Ken. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Disclose classified information only when a NEED TO KNOW exists. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 2 January 2012 18:46, Kenneth Lerman kenneth.ler...@se-ltd.com wrote: That will be the third such machine I have. It does have built-in video, but you don't have to use it. However, there is no reason not to use the built-in video with that card, it works fine. -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Mon, 2 Jan 2012, gene heskett wrote: Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 14:06:25 -0500 From: gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com Reply-To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down On Monday, January 02, 2012 01:47:39 PM gene heskett did opine: [...] With regard to a bad hal file killing the machine, I am now beginning to lean toward a flaky psu, its not liking 50F ambient temps in the shop, and has crashed with grand and goriously colored confetti on the screen within 20 minutes of the last 3, fully powered down reboots. gkrellm says the 5 volt line is sagging and I say 4.87 volts once. That psu is about a year old. I have a 2 or 3 year old HiPro that is a tad undersized in this box, still holding its 5 volt line at 5.05. But nobody has any more HiPro's. All the rest seem engineered to sag go out of tolerance about 2 weeks after the end of the warraty, worst offenders are Antec. Maybe I'll even buy a whole new box. If I could find one of those compact models with a usable parport no built in video. Is anyone actually selling that intel board that has been discussed here in a ready to go package? I'd drop the card for one of those in a heartbeat. I've found a barebones box with a D525 board in it, for $120, claims to have the lpt on the back panel already. Needs a couple sticks of ddr2, a smallish sata drive and a dvd reader. http://www.outletpc.com/rj3658.html $120 kit $ 29 ram $ 80 500G sata3 drive $ 40 laptop style dvd drive, don't see how desktop would fit $ 24 keyboard/mouse with usb rf dongle _ $293 + whatever Looks like it would be a ready to install 10.04 on. What do the folks here think of this kit? Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot? Be carefull with MB choices, the Intel D525 MB is known to have good latency not sure about the Foxconn. Also the Intel 525 has a parallel port out the back (no cable needed) INTEL 945 DB25 out back 510 26 pin header on MB 525 DB25 out back -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users Peter Wallace Mesa Electronics (\__/) (='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your ()_() signature to help him gain world domination. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 2 January 2012 19:12, gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com wrote: MBD-I-D525MWV 1 D525MWV Mini-ITX Motherboard 85.00 Does that include the lpt breakout kit? No need, the D525 has the LPT on the back panel, it's the purple one here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121442 Disks are hens teeth ATM, although I hear production is ramping back up after the tsunami now. I like these, they plug straight into an SATA socket: http://www.suntekstore.co.uk/goods.php?id=10010116utm_source=gbuk 8GB is plenty for Ubuntu + EMC2, including the source and development dependencies. 32GB costs about 3x as much. -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:29:55 PM Peter C. Wallace did opine: On Mon, 2 Jan 2012, gene heskett wrote: Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 14:06:25 -0500 From: gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com Reply-To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net To: emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down On Monday, January 02, 2012 01:47:39 PM gene heskett did opine: [...] With regard to a bad hal file killing the machine, I am now beginning to lean toward a flaky psu, its not liking 50F ambient temps in the shop, and has crashed with grand and goriously colored confetti on the screen within 20 minutes of the last 3, fully powered down reboots. gkrellm says the 5 volt line is sagging and I say 4.87 volts once. That psu is about a year old. I have a 2 or 3 year old HiPro that is a tad undersized in this box, still holding its 5 volt line at 5.05. But nobody has any more HiPro's. All the rest seem engineered to sag go out of tolerance about 2 weeks after the end of the warraty, worst offenders are Antec. Maybe I'll even buy a whole new box. If I could find one of those compact models with a usable parport no built in video. Is anyone actually selling that intel board that has been discussed here in a ready to go package? I'd drop the card for one of those in a heartbeat. I've found a barebones box with a D525 board in it, for $120, claims to have the lpt on the back panel already. Needs a couple sticks of ddr2, a smallish sata drive and a dvd reader. http://www.outletpc.com/rj3658.html $120 kit $ 29 ram $ 80 500G sata3 drive $ 40 laptop style dvd drive, don't see how desktop would fit $ 24 keyboard/mouse with usb rf dongle _ $293 + whatever Looks like it would be a ready to install 10.04 on. What do the folks here think of this kit? Cheers, Gene Be carefull with MB choices, the Intel D525 MB is known to have good latency not sure about the Foxconn. Also the Intel 525 has a parallel port out the back (no cable needed) INTEL 945 DB25 out back 510 26 pin header on MB 525 DB25 out back Thanks Peter. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust. -- Lawrence Dalzell -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:31:38 PM andy pugh did opine: On 2 January 2012 18:46, Kenneth Lerman kenneth.ler...@se-ltd.com wrote: That will be the third such machine I have. It does have built-in video, but you don't have to use it. However, there is no reason not to use the built-in video with that card, it works fine. And this is the foxcon board? Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid. - Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/2/2012 2:06 PM, gene heskett wrote: On Monday, January 02, 2012 01:47:39 PM gene heskett did opine: [...] With regard to a bad hal file killing the machine, I am now beginning to lean toward a flaky psu, its not liking 50F ambient temps in the shop, and has crashed with grand and goriously colored confetti on the screen within 20 minutes of the last 3, fully powered down reboots. gkrellm says the 5 volt line is sagging and I say 4.87 volts once. That psu is about a year old. I have a 2 or 3 year old HiPro that is a tad undersized in this box, still holding its 5 volt line at 5.05. But nobody has any more HiPro's. All the rest seem engineered to sag go out of tolerance about 2 weeks after the end of the warraty, worst offenders are Antec. Maybe I'll even buy a whole new box. If I could find one of those compact models with a usable parport no built in video. Is anyone actually selling that intel board that has been discussed here in a ready to go package? I'd drop the card for one of those in a heartbeat. I've found a barebones box with a D525 board in it, for $120, claims to have the lpt on the back panel already. Needs a couple sticks of ddr2, a smallish sata drive and a dvd reader. http://www.outletpc.com/rj3658.html $120 kit $ 29 ram $ 80 500G sata3 drive $ 40 laptop style dvd drive, don't see how desktop would fit $ 24 keyboard/mouse with usb rf dongle _ $293 + whatever Looks like it would be a ready to install 10.04 on. What do the folks here think of this kit? Cheers, Gene Gene: First thoughts 1) what motherboard is it, actually? We've been talking mostly about Intel motherboards containing Intel Atom D510 and D525 processors. I also have an ASUS AT5NM10-I motherboard (with Intel Atom D510 cpu) that seems to be comparable to the Intel D510MO motherboard I used to have, if perhaps just a tick slower on the latency test (I believe both of these boards are now out of production). Don't know about other makes/models. 2) why are you willing to trust new power supplies any more than the old grin They just keep getting more cost effective. 3) why do you need the dvd drive? Seems irrelevant in a machine controller. 4) how much RAM are you talking about? I wouldn't settle for less than 1GB. 5) not a knock against this particular combo, but am I the only one who is leery of USB keyboard/mouse connections? Unfortunately, I didn't keep good notes, but I've noticed in playing with odd computers that come my way that some disrupt the latency test when I move the mouse, more so with USB mice. If I ever get some time I'd like to do some experiments. Obviously, it may be dependent on the motherboard, the cpu, the south bridge, the bios, etc., so nailing down definitive guidelines may be difficult. Good luck. Regards, Kent -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Mon, 2012-01-02 at 14:12 -0500, gene heskett wrote: ... snip Disks are hens teeth ATM, although I hear production is ramping back up after the tsunami now. ... snip I would consider nixing the optical drive and maybe the hard drive and use a USB thumb drive for installation and or normal use. Although, I have been thinking about one of these $20 drives: http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=423 badblocks -svw -o hd_bad_blocks should verify if they are in good order. I'm also considering: http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=813 http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=802 -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:34:16 PM andy pugh did opine: On 2 January 2012 19:12, gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com wrote: MBD-I-D525MWV 1 D525MWV Mini-ITX Motherboard85.00 Does that include the lpt breakout kit? No need, the D525 has the LPT on the back panel, it's the purple one here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121442 Thanks Andy Disks are hens teeth ATM, although I hear production is ramping back up after the tsunami now. I like these, they plug straight into an SATA socket: http://www.suntekstore.co.uk/goods.php?id=10010116utm_source=gbuk 8GB is plenty for Ubuntu + EMC2, including the source and development dependencies. 32GB costs about 3x as much. It may be, but how long does it work with ext3? I would rather have rotating storage I can count on for a year or so. Thanks Andy Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid. - Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
gene heskett wrote: Maybe I'll even buy a whole new box. If I could find one of those compact models with a usable parport no built in video. Is anyone actually selling that intel board that has been discussed here in a ready to go package? I'd drop the card for one of those in a heartbeat. You can get the Intel D525MW and all the accessories from directron.com, I have bought a few from them. Note that the D525MW uses 204 pin memory instead of the 240 pin used on the D510MO board. That tripped me up. Directron has all the parts you need to build a system. I used a bigger box because some of the systems I build needed a full-size PCI card. I also got a solid state disk. This seemed to work fine, has good latency numbers, and the on-board video is no problem. I'd bet you could get this from Micro Center if there's one near you, but might cost a few $ more. Assembly takes less than 10 minutes. Jon -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/2/2012 2:23 PM, andy pugh wrote: On 2 January 2012 19:12, gene heskettghesk...@wdtv.com wrote: MBD-I-D525MWV 1 D525MWV Mini-ITX Motherboard85.00 Does that include the lpt breakout kit? No need, the D525 has the LPT on the back panel, it's the purple one here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121442 This is true also for my ASUS mb and I suspect for others. You just have to keep digging until you get to a description you can trust. Some descriptions and photos posted to the Internet, even by some reputable vendors, may or may not be totally accurate, and even the best vendors do a terrible job providing comparable information for each motherboard they sell. Disks are hens teeth ATM, although I hear production is ramping back up after the tsunami now. I like these, they plug straight into an SATA socket: http://www.suntekstore.co.uk/goods.php?id=10010116utm_source=gbuk 8GB is plenty for Ubuntu + EMC2, including the source and development dependencies. 32GB costs about 3x as much. 8GB is plenty for a production EMC2 machine but in tests with virtual hosts I keep running out of room with only 8GB of disk space when I try any fancy development work. 12GB is fine but not a reasonable number for a physical drive. Regards, Kent -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 2 January 2012 19:32, gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com wrote: On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:31:38 PM andy pugh did opine: However, there is no reason not to use the built-in video with that card, it works fine. And this is the foxcon board? No, this is the Intel BOXD525MW (but I think that BOX might just mean it is in a box) -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 2 January 2012 19:36, gene heskett ghesk...@wdtv.com wrote: http://www.suntekstore.co.uk/goods.php?id=10010116utm_source=gbuk It may be, but how long does it work with ext3? I would rather have rotating storage I can count on for a year or so. I have been using an 8GB one of those to compile EMC2 several times a night for well over a year. I thought it had died once, and bought a replacement, but the problem turned out to be that a log file had filled the entire drive. (my fault, printing a pin value to dmesg every mS) -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:50:10 PM Kent A. Reed did opine: On 1/2/2012 2:06 PM, gene heskett wrote: On Monday, January 02, 2012 01:47:39 PM gene heskett did opine: [...] With regard to a bad hal file killing the machine, I am now beginning to lean toward a flaky psu, its not liking 50F ambient temps in the shop, and has crashed with grand and goriously colored confetti on the screen within 20 minutes of the last 3, fully powered down reboots. gkrellm says the 5 volt line is sagging and I say 4.87 volts once. That psu is about a year old. I have a 2 or 3 year old HiPro that is a tad undersized in this box, still holding its 5 volt line at 5.05. But nobody has any more HiPro's. All the rest seem engineered to sag go out of tolerance about 2 weeks after the end of the warraty, worst offenders are Antec. Maybe I'll even buy a whole new box. If I could find one of those compact models with a usable parport no built in video. Is anyone actually selling that intel board that has been discussed here in a ready to go package? I'd drop the card for one of those in a heartbeat. I've found a barebones box with a D525 board in it, for $120, claims to have the lpt on the back panel already. Needs a couple sticks of ddr2, a smallish sata drive and a dvd reader. http://www.outletpc.com/rj3658.html $120 kit $ 29 ram $ 80 500G sata3 drive $ 40 laptop style dvd drive, don't see how desktop would fit $ 24 keyboard/mouse with usb rf dongle _ $293 + whatever Looks like it would be a ready to install 10.04 on. What do the folks here think of this kit? Cheers, Gene Gene: First thoughts 1) what motherboard is it, actually? We've been talking mostly about Intel motherboards containing Intel Atom D510 and D525 processors. I also have an ASUS AT5NM10-I motherboard (with Intel Atom D510 cpu) that seems to be comparable to the Intel D510MO motherboard I used to have, if perhaps just a tick slower on the latency test (I believe both of these boards are now out of production). Don't know about other makes/models. The one I quoted says its a foxconn with the same chipset the real intel board has. 2) why are you willing to trust new power supplies any more than the old grin They just keep getting more cost effective. Tell me about it, these guys are surviving on the replacement market, so they are carefully engineered to fall over a short time after the warranty expires, and of course the warranty is subject to all sorts of fine print provisions so they can wiggle out of it. I would just get in the truck run up to staples and get another, except the only thing on the shelf is 3x what I need, and says Antec on it, sure fire indication of the crappiest PSU around. 3) why do you need the dvd drive? Seems irrelevant in a machine controller. To install from the cd/dvd. Than it can go away, but first the bios must be able to boot from a usb drive, none of mine are capable, hence the requirement for internal sata dvd's in this box, internal pata drives in the other 3 around here. To say my hardware is getting ancient is a given, but then so am I. :) 4) how much RAM are you talking about? I wouldn't settle for less than 1GB. Neither will I, but since 500Megs has dropped off the radar, its now 1Gb minimum, and 2 of them because that sets up the crossfire access making the box 2x faster, so today, 2Gb is minimum. 5) not a knock against this particular combo, but am I the only one who is leery of USB keyboard/mouse connections? Unfortunately, I didn't keep good notes, but I've noticed in playing with odd computers that come my way that some disrupt the latency test when I move the mouse, more so with USB mice. If I ever get some time I'd like to do some experiments. Obviously, it may be dependent on the motherboard, the cpu, the south bridge, the bios, etc., so nailing down definitive guidelines may be difficult. And expensively arbitrary. Buy try IOW. OTOH, ps2 stuff has largely turned into Dodo birds, extinct for the most part. I did, at big lots, find a rubber (comes rolled up in a tube) keyboard with a usb connector on it, but haven't actually plugged it in. The basic idea is a sealed and swarf-proof keyboard. I short out or stick a key about 2x a year here it seems. :( Interestingly, it hasn't crashed in a bit over an hour now, so while I am ssh'd into it, I'm running latency-test. Since its video isn't doing anything but refreshing the stationary local screen, I've got a solid 17.5 u-secs out of a 25 u-sec base thread on that box. But that will triple and throw its one error about 20% of the time just starting emc. But I haven't ever heard its effects in the form of a rough tone from my steppers, so I've not been overly concerned with trying to throw money at it and fix it. Humm, something tickled it, its now up to 18.2 u-secs. For that mobo, that is
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
One small data point: Be carefull with MB choices, the Intel D525 MB is known to have good latency not sure about the Foxconn. I found that a Foxconn board that we used to sell had much worse latency than the Intel DG41AN. No idea how it compares to the D525. Rogge -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/2/2012 2:58 PM, andy pugh wrote: On 2 January 2012 19:32, gene heskettghesk...@wdtv.com wrote: On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:31:38 PM andy pugh did opine: However, there is no reason not to use the built-in video with that card, it works fine. And this is the foxcon board? No, this is the Intel BOXD525MW (but I think that BOX might just mean it is in a box) FYI - the Intel Box CPU set usually come with a CPU fan, Sata Cables, the rear cutout that pops in the chassis - otherwise known as an I/O shield and installation instructions.Since the MW525 does not need a CPU fan, there is no fan included. The Box is really designed for retail sales so it looks nice etc, in contrast to a bulk package.Also the warranty is sometimes different.The Box MW525 has a 3 year warranty. I'm not sure about the bulk packed Motherboards. The MW525 from Intel is a known entity. I have no idea how well the Foxcon 525 board compares. I've assembled several MW525 PCs this past year.The cost difference between the Foxconn 525 and the Intel may be $10. The Intel MW525 boots just fine off an external USB DVD/CDRW drive. Dave -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/2/2012 2:12 PM, gene heskett wrote: Stuff that I deleted Subtotal 230.25 Shipping Cost (UPSGR)13.22 Total$243.47 Does that include the lpt breakout kit? And is it time I bought a portable dvd writer that plugs into a usb port to do installs such with? Will it boot from a usb dvd drive? It has a db25 for the lpt on the back panel. I bought a usb drive that I never took out of the box. It will boot from a usb drive. Better yet, it will boot and install over the network. I forget the precise trickery, but it involved copying the .iso file to my server, installing a tftpserver, and mounting the .iso using the loopback device. I did need to connect a monitor and keyboard to set the appropriate boot order. (Also, I had to reflash the bios. As shipped, when you told it to reboot, it would hang. You had to power it down and then back up again for it to reboot.) I'll try to keep better notes when I do this again later in the week with my new hardware. Ken I just ordered another one of these -- although the disk price has increased slightly, it is still around $250. Disks are hens teeth ATM, although I hear production is ramping back up after the tsunami now. That will be the third such machine I have. It does have built-in video, but you don't have to use it. It's a nice little package that runs without a fan. Don't forget to order the power cable that is needed to connect the power supply to the motherboard. (I forgot to do this on my first order and got an email telling me that it was needed.) You DO have to assemble it yourself, but that's pretty easy. NOTE -- I am not running EMC on this -- But I am running my phone system on one. Regards, Ken Is anyone running emc on this? How is the latency? Thanks Ken. Cheers, Gene -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 04:53:35 PM Dave did opine: On 1/2/2012 2:58 PM, andy pugh wrote: On 2 January 2012 19:32, gene heskettghesk...@wdtv.com wrote: On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:31:38 PM andy pugh did opine: However, there is no reason not to use the built-in video with that card, it works fine. And this is the foxcon board? No, this is the Intel BOXD525MW (but I think that BOX might just mean it is in a box) FYI - the Intel Box CPU set usually come with a CPU fan, Sata Cables, the rear cutout that pops in the chassis - otherwise known as an I/O shield and installation instructions.Since the MW525 does not need a CPU fan, there is no fan included. The Box is really designed for retail sales so it looks nice etc, in contrast to a bulk package.Also the warranty is sometimes different.The Box MW525 has a 3 year warranty. I'm not sure about the bulk packed Motherboards. The MW525 from Intel is a known entity. I have no idea how well the Foxcon 525 board compares. I've assembled several MW525 PCs this past year.The cost difference between the Foxconn 525 and the Intel may be $10. The Intel MW525 boots just fine off an external USB DVD/CDRW drive. Dave One thing seems to be that there is nobody at home, at any of the contact us phone numbers today, so until I can verify how much of a premium I'll ave to pay to swap the foxconn board for the real thing remains to be discovered. Back to shoveling snow intermittently. :( Humm, providence maybe. I called Jim, who did have a computer repair shop up in Jane Lew, but closed it after 2 years because there wasn't enough work coming in to pay him a buck an hour on average, so they loaded up what inventory they had took it home on June 30th last year. Some of that inventory included 5 or 6 Ultra 400 PSU's, so I told him I'd be up and get one as soon as he got home from the funeral parlor, the father of one of the sales guys at the tv station had died. But as I was wrapping up that conversation my phone started the call waiting beeps. It was Mike, 2 doors up the street, offering to give me the innards out of an old compaq he was writing off on this year tax returns. So I grabbed a meter and went up, tossed the mobo out on a wooden board, dug enough out of the box to power it up and measured the PSU out as 5.11 volts on a drive cable. Stayed had a cuppa, then slip-slid my way back to the house, box under arm, no charge, got everything but the hard drive case. It was a 1Ghz athlon, single 256meg memory stick. So my problem may be solved till this next psu fades away. I'll probably see if that memory will fit in an HP I have that has the same CPU but keeps running out of memory because that is all that is in it. That box is into swap in 5 minutes from a cold boot just playing 'intertoobs' music so I haven't tried to use the goat for anything useful. Goat seems an apt name, as its 100% sacrificial, and if it was a cat, would long since be out of lives. :-P Not that I'm going to putz with it tonight, but tomorrow maybe because to get at it, I'll have to prop open the door to make room for a small ladder to reach it. I see the latency-test is still running, showing 21.something u-secs now after about 1.5 hours. With that PSU showing at 4.92. I would dearly love to find the reference in those things be able to jiggle it up .2 volts at a time as they age. But then they couldn't sell me another every 13 months, so those Chinese will see to it that that isn't going to happen, not even if I bet the farm on it. But even the 'dead' ones are excellent src's for power hexfet's when you manage to blow the one in the mills head housing. Besides, the streets have a nice coat of black ice under a 1/4 covering of snow that says I'd better stay home anyway. My Dee is feeling some better, so I don't think I'll have to run out and get her anything yet tonight. And she, knowing the streets are bad, wouldn't send me out unless she was out of smoke, that would do it. ;) Thanks Dave have a better 2012. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene FACILITY REJECTED 10004420; -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 06:26:30 PM Kenneth Lerman did opine: On 1/2/2012 2:12 PM, gene heskett wrote: Stuff that I deleted Subtotal 230.25 Shipping Cost (UPSGR) 13.22 Total $243.47 Does that include the lpt breakout kit? And is it time I bought a portable dvd writer that plugs into a usb port to do installs such with? Will it boot from a usb dvd drive? It has a db25 for the lpt on the back panel. I bought a usb drive that I never took out of the box. It will boot from a usb drive. Better yet, it will boot and install over the network. I forget the precise trickery, but it involved copying the .iso file to my server, installing a tftpserver, and mounting the .iso using the loopback device. Humm, I hadn't considered that route. Interesting. Stuck in the last decade I am. :) I did need to connect a monitor and keyboard to set the appropriate boot order. A given. (Also, I had to reflash the bios. As shipped, when you told it to reboot, it would hang. You had to power it down and then back up again for it to reboot.) And this box hangs on the shutdown phase, taking an hour to do the swapoff -f if its 200 megs into swap. PIMA is what it is, I usually just give up and hit the reset button. I'll try to keep better notes when I do this again later in the week with my new hardware. Ken Chuckle, BTDT Ken, something I am entirely too remiss at doing myself. Dammit. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene I am what you will be; I was what you are. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
gene heskett wrote: Is anyone running emc on this? How is the latency? I've tested the Intel D525MW motherboard, and put it in the database. The servo thread jitter was 15595, the base thread was 11921. That is fine for any system with a hardware interface (servo or stepper) but may be a little marginal for software step generation. Since I'm a servo bigot, it was quite good for me. The on-board parallel port passed all the tests with my EPP devices. EMC 2.4.x with Ubuntu 10.04 loads and runs with no quirks at all. I did the install on a 16 GB SSD hard drive. Jon -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
gene heskett wrote: On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:31:38 PM andy pugh did opine: On 2 January 2012 18:46, Kenneth Lerman kenneth.ler...@se-ltd.com wrote: That will be the third such machine I have. It does have built-in video, but you don't have to use it. However, there is no reason not to use the built-in video with that card, it works fine. And this is the foxcon board? No, I have only tested the genuine Intel motherboard. Jon -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
andy pugh wrote: No, this is the Intel BOXD525MW (but I think that BOX might just mean it is in a box) Yes, it means there is an individual cardboard box with holographic anti-counterfeit label, meant for sale to the end-user, instead of packed in cases of a dozen or so. Jon -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
gene heskett wrote: How about this one? $219 http://www.directron.com/extremevalue.html only needs an optical drive for installs. I am tempted to get 2, one for the lathe. Yup, looks mostly OK to me. It has a plastic window on the side, and a fan. You may need the fan with the magnetic hard drive. They systems I picked out piece by piece were fanless, and used a small SSD. These systems run amazingly cool. I ran one for a day and then opened the case. The big CPU heatsink had a detectable temperature rise, everything else was cold to the touch. I thought in a machine tool environment fanless would be better. Jon -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/2/2012 10:35 PM, Jon Elson wrote: gene heskett wrote: Is anyone running emc on this? How is the latency? I've tested the Intel D525MW motherboard, and put it in the database. The servo thread jitter was 15595, the base thread was 11921. That is fine for any system with a hardware interface (servo or stepper) but may be a little marginal for software step generation. Since I'm a servo bigot, it was quite good for me. The on-board parallel port passed all the tests with my EPP devices. EMC 2.4.x with Ubuntu 10.04 loads and runs with no quirks at all. I did the install on a 16 GB SSD hard drive. Jon Jon: This is a multi-cpu board. Did you set the isolcpus boot parameter? The reason I ask is IIRC I got similar numbers with a standard boot from the LiveCD on my ASUS board and saw them drop below 1 when I set isolcpus=1. This may be a false memory (I did the tests last winter) and I'm away from the board at the moment. I'll do the tests again in the morning and this time I'll post the results on the Wiki. Regards, Kent -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 11:40:59 PM Jon Elson did opine: gene heskett wrote: Is anyone running emc on this? How is the latency? I've tested the Intel D525MW motherboard, and put it in the database. The servo thread jitter was 15595, the base thread was 11921. That's pretty good for onboard video. The board I am currently running has onboard too, but its shared memory, with jitters in the 2 millisecond and up range. Plumb fuggly so I never even tried to use it to move the machine. That is fine for any system with a hardware interface (servo or stepper) but may be a little marginal for software step generation. Since I'm a servo bigot, it was quite good for me. The on-board parallel port passed all the tests with my EPP devices. EMC 2.4.x with Ubuntu 10.04 loads and runs with no quirks at all. I did the install on a 16 GB SSD hard drive. Jon Thanks Jon. I may have found the paddles that will bring my present box back to life. One of the neighbors gave me most of an old compaq today, with a much better psu, a full .2 volts higher, which I think is the main problem with mine. If I can shovel my way to the shop tomorrow (its coming down decent here, about 3 so far), that theory will be tested. If that's not it, then I think I'll get 2 of those, one for the mill one for the lathe. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Earth -- mother of the most beautiful women in the universe. -- Apollo, Who Mourns for Adonais? stardate 3468.1 -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 11:49:36 PM Jon Elson did opine: gene heskett wrote: On Monday, January 02, 2012 02:31:38 PM andy pugh did opine: On 2 January 2012 18:46, Kenneth Lerman kenneth.ler...@se-ltd.com wrote: That will be the third such machine I have. It does have built-in video, but you don't have to use it. However, there is no reason not to use the built-in video with that card, it works fine. And this is the foxcon board? No, I have only tested the genuine Intel motherboard. Jon Well, if I have to buy, then I'll have to see what premium they want for the real thing. No use buying a pig in a poke designed to hide the fact that the hams are gone. :) Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all. -- Arthur Balfour -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 11:52:14 PM Jon Elson did opine: gene heskett wrote: How about this one? $219 http://www.directron.com/extremevalue.html only needs an optical drive for installs. I am tempted to get 2, one for the lathe. Yup, looks mostly OK to me. It has a plastic window on the side, and a fan. You may need the fan with the magnetic hard drive. They systems I picked out piece by piece were fanless, and used a small SSD. These systems run amazingly cool. I ran one for a day and then opened the case. The big CPU heatsink had a detectable temperature rise, everything else was cold to the touch. I thought in a machine tool environment fanless would be better. I certainly can't argue that point. Fans suck in everything. OTOH when I built a new box for my drive electronics, I used 1/3 3/16 thick alu panels stuck a 6 rotron 120 volt noisemaker inside the mostly sealed box, then put a another much quieter fan to skim the top with shop air. At 99F in the shop, a probe stuck through an empty cable hole inside about 3 said 107F inside the box after about 7 hours on time. That is good enough for the girls I go with. :-) And it should stay relatively clean inside. I'll see how dirty it has gotten so far in the next day or so as I intend to check dipswitch #4 on the A axis driver, it is not powering down to 50% drive when idle, so that motor is running noticeably hotter than the other 3. If the switch is set, I'll bounce it back, as I bought an extra driver when I bought those. Precisely for that reason. :) Jon Thanks Jon. Cheers, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom. -- Mark Twain -- Write once. Port to many. Get the SDK and tools to simplify cross-platform app development. Create new or port existing apps to sell to consumers worldwide. Explore the Intel AppUpSM program developer opportunity. appdeveloper.intel.com/join http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-appdev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Sunday, January 01, 2012 08:37:16 PM gene heskett did opine: Greets everybody; I had gone back to an older $config because it had all the A axis stuff it it, and of course had to do a bit of fine tuning in the .ini file. But when I fired off a proggy that used the M3-4-5 spindle controls, I wrecked the first piece of pcb material I put in the jig. Very carefully zeroed/homed to an electrical contact from the bit to the pcb, it ran a program that should have carved a recess in the board about .005 deep, but went a good 35 thou into it, At which point I noted that the spindle was running backwards. Humm, dig into the .hal file, and reading the newest integrator manual on about page 51, I started to search thru the file find where I needed to add a reverse to the direction pin. I found a cw assignment, but not a ccw assignment, which, since that signal and the controller are rigged to reverse when that signal is true, and which it appears I could just change the name from -cw to -ccw to effect the logic reversal. But that killed all spindle controls because the value being delivered to pwmgen for speed was stuck at 0 according to hal-configuration-watch. But with that stuff scattered all up and down a 120+ line hal file, I got the brilliant (yeah, sure) idea to move all the spindle related stuff into one contiguous stanza in the file. Make it easier to track the setup, at least in my mind... Unforch, it is now complaining of a doubled pin assignment but the complaint is hidden behind the splash image. I think, I only see it for maybe 50ms before the monitor goes blank and I have to hit the hardware reset to get it to reboot. ATM, I cannot find a doubled assignment in the file. I just checked the times on the emc_debug.txt and emc_print.txt files, and it is not updating those for my startup attempts so I don't have any clues from there. grepping the hal file for parport.0.pin-14: net spindle-ccw = parport.0.pin-14-out grepping for pwmgen: loadrt pwmgen output_type=0 addf pwmgen.update servo-thread addf pwmgen.make-pulses base-thread net spindle-cmd-with-only-positive-magnitude = abs.0.out = pwmgen.0.value net spindle-enable = motion.spindle-on = pwmgen.0.enable net spindle-pwm = pwmgen.0.pwm setp pwmgen.0.pwm-freq 100.0 setp pwmgen.0.scale 1583. setp pwmgen.0.offset 0.108421052632 setp pwmgen.0.dither-pwm true grepping for spindle:# put all the spindle stuffs here net spindle-cmd = motion.spindle-speed-out net spindle-cmd = abs.0.in net spindle-cmd-with-only-positive-magnitude = abs.0.out = pwmgen.0.value net spindle-enable = motion.spindle-on = pwmgen.0.enable net spindle-pwm = pwmgen.0.pwm net spindle-ccw = motion.spindle-reverse net spindle-ccw = parport.0.pin-14-out net spindle-pwm = parport.0.pin-16-out And because the motor controller has no clue, the reversing is being done with a reversing relay controlled by parport.0.pin-14-out, there is an abs function for the pwm speed, grepping for that: loadrt abs count=1 net spindle-cmd = abs.0.in net spindle-cmd-with-only-positive-magnitude = abs.0.out = pwmgen.0.value addf abs.0 servo-thread How do I best proceed to locate this critter is the question? I want to know what I did wrong put some notes in the binder. Thanks guys sending wishes for Happy Prosperous New Year to all. Further thought: How do you folks arrive at those logic diagrams shown at several locations in the Integrators Manual I just printed fresh last Thursday? It seems to me that graphing utility could be useful in spotting what I so nicely screwed up. :) Cheers Thanks, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene You shall be rewarded for a dastardly deed. -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On 1/1/2012 8:41 PM, gene heskett wrote: ... Thanks guys sending wishes for Happy Prosperous New Year to all. Further thought: How do you folks arrive at those logic diagrams shown at several locations in the Integrators Manual I just printed fresh last Thursday? It seems to me that graphing utility could be useful in spotting what I so nicely screwed up. :) Cheers Thanks, Gene Be specific to be terrific is my wife's motto. Do you mean diagrams such as Figure 8.3 Step Pulse Generator Block Diagram in the EMC2 v2.4 Integrators Manual? I didn't make that diagram but I think Dia could get you most of the way there with the symbols on several sheets (see the Cybernetics sheet, for example). It's not my favorite graphing tool but it's serviceable. As for debugging your hal file, that's the problem I was working on in the fall with my attempts to graph the hal network. The feedback I got here suggested my approach wasn't lighting anyone's fire, but my wife's health has taken a big nose dive (I just retrieved her from an outrageous neuro-surgical procedure that has her head and spine held together with titanium plate, rods, and screws) so I'm unlikely to be working on my hal graphing script or anything else related to EMC2---indefinitely. Here's hoping 2012 will be better. Regards, Kent -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] hal taking machine down
On Monday, January 02, 2012 01:57:46 AM Kent A. Reed did opine: On 1/1/2012 8:41 PM, gene heskett wrote: ... Thanks guys sending wishes for Happy Prosperous New Year to all. Further thought: How do you folks arrive at those logic diagrams shown at several locations in the Integrators Manual I just printed fresh last Thursday? It seems to me that graphing utility could be useful in spotting what I so nicely screwed up. :) Cheers Thanks, Gene Be specific to be terrific is my wife's motto. Do you mean diagrams such as Figure 8.3 Step Pulse Generator Block Diagram in the EMC2 v2.4 Integrators Manual? Something like that. I didn't make that diagram but I think Dia could get you most of the way there with the symbols on several sheets (see the Cybernetics sheet, for example). It's not my favorite graphing tool but it's serviceable. Something more for me to learn, I'll take a look come some civilized time of the day, thanks. As for debugging your hal file, that's the problem I was working on in the fall with my attempts to graph the hal network. The feedback I got here suggested my approach wasn't lighting anyone's fire, I hope it didn't come from me! but my wife's health has taken a big nose dive (I just retrieved her from an outrageous neuro-surgical procedure that has her head and spine held together with titanium plate, rods, and screws) so I'm unlikely to be working on my hal graphing script or anything else related to EMC2---indefinitely. OMG! Obviously. And my sympathies Kent, our ladies always come first. Mine has COPD. I assume that this not exactly a temporary condition when they have to do that extreme a procedure. I wish her the very best. Here's hoping 2012 will be better. Amen! Regards, Kent Cheers Kent, Gene -- There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order. -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene I'm pretending that we're all watching PHIL SILVERS instead of RICARDO MONTALBAN! -- Ridiculously easy VDI. With Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, you don't need a complex infrastructure or vast IT resources to deliver seamless, secure access to virtual desktops. With this all-in-one solution, easily deploy virtual desktops for less than the cost of PCs and save 60% on VDI infrastructure costs. Try it free! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Citrix-VDIinabox ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
