If the BeagleBoard port works out, we could then look at other, cheaper, ARM9 boards. The BeagleBoard has all kinds of stuff we don't need (e.g., video, including 2 or 3D acceleration), and leaves out ethernet, plus may be subsidized (and might have some availability issues). If we can get to a more generic ARM9 board, I think we'll have a really excellent solution going forward for EMC, with even more of the benefits Jon lists below. (There are even some fairly cheap--$100/qty 10--boards with ARM9 and a small FPGA, along with ethernet, memory card, etc.) However, the BeagleBoard is popular, has lots of on-board resources, and so may be just the right environment in which to get the ARM9 project going.
I look forward to hearing more progress on this front. It's not going to be the only solution for everyone, but for a lot of us, it will be very useful and very powerful, and will get us past the parallel port issue definitively. (As a Mac user, I'm looking forward to running Axis on my main laptop for real, not just simulation.) --Dale At 8:27 PM -0600 12/9/09, Jon Elson wrote: >Stephen Wille Padnos wrote: >> >> Considering that a D945GCLF2 motherboard is $80, 2GB memory is $40, a >> hard drive is $50, and a DC-DC power supply is $50 (you could of course >> get a full ATX case with power supply for less), I'm not sure where the >> beagleboard really helps. It's definitely smaller. It's somewhat less >> expensive (though I'm not sure how far below $220 you're going to get, >> once you add a power supply, I/O conditioning, etc), it takes somewhat >> less power (3W vs. 26W). >> >> For the small differences in cost, size, and power, you end up with a >> full PC with gigabit network, 1.6GHz dual-core CPU, reasonable 3D >> graphics, excellent latency numbers (maybe 8000 or so IIRC), and a PCI slot. >> >> Of course there's always a bit of pride to be taken in doing more with >> less, I'm not sure there's really a great payoff here. >> >Does this have a parallel port that does EPP? The Beagle is actually >quit "cute". >You can run it quite well off an 8 GB SD card, no hard drive at all, and >a USB-Ethernet >dongle. So, that is about $208. I just found out how to use one of the >$9.95 Chinese >USB-net dongles, so that drops the price down to $175 plus some >shipping. It runs >off a single 5 V supply, a wall-wart is fine at these power levels. It >would also run >quite well from 12 V with a little regulator chip. You'd need some >surge protection >from the spiky car electrical system, though. I have a board that >converts the Beagle's >expansion port to 5 V levels and EPP parallel port pinout. (That will >runs any >standard parallel port function as well.) > >This whole "new direction" was started as insurance against loss of the >old parallel port >and possibly destruction of real time latency with newer incarnations of >the Intel >core 9000 hyper-megaplex CPUs in the pipeline. It would also allow >people who >INSIST on using old laptops to get their way. They could run the GUI on >the laptop, >and link to the beagle via Ethernet. The Beagle would be inside the CNC >control >box. > >Jon > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Return on Information: >Google Enterprise Search pays you back >Get the facts. >http://p.sf.net/sfu/google-dev2dev >_______________________________________________ >Emc-users mailing list >Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Return on Information: Google Enterprise Search pays you back Get the facts. http://p.sf.net/sfu/google-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
