I started out using used PCs off Craig's List. I'd pop in the LinuxCNC LiveCD and test the latency to ensure it would work with LinuxCNC. I had good luck with that inexpensive strategy.
Lately, I've been using PC motherboards inside the electronics cabinet for a more finished and less cobbled together appearance. I buy the motherboard, RAM, power supply and hard drive. I use 64 GB solid state drives. I use 4 GB of RAM to hopefully avoid needing to access the swap partition on the SSD and eventually wear out the flash memory. I tried using small solid state DC to DC converters for the PC power supply (MiniBox) and while they'd power the low power Atom based motherboards, there wasn't enough left to power the 5V logic for the motor drives, so I just get a regular old ATX PC power supply, making sure it has the connectors the motherboard needs. I did a couple of machines with the popular Intel D525MW motherboards. They worked well for me, but they're now discontinued and harder to find. The machine I'm about to build (24" X 24" CNC Router) is using the Intel D2500. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135339 I also used two sticks of the following G.SKILL RAM. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231212 I don't have any time on the new machine that I'm building, but I tested the D2500 setup in one of my previous machines and it seems to work well. I haven't used the PCI on any of these Intel motherboards, but they're reported to work well. I've used them in simple machines, with parallel port I/O controlling stepper motors. I use the small wireless Logitech K400 keyboards and the wired pendants from JogIt! I'd like to try a touch screen interface some time. Good luck! On 09/11/2013 10:39 AM, Matt Shaver wrote: > I might (hopefully) be doing a few new linuxcnc retrofit projects so I > was wondering what everyone likes these days for motherboards. May basic > requirements are: > > MiniITX Form Factor > (1) PCI slot for a Mesa 5i25 (or alternatively a PCI-E slot for a 6i25) > Predictable enough latency to avoid the dreaded "real time error" popups > Cheap would also be nice :) > > Also, any recommendations on touch screen setups that work with minimal > hacking would be welcome as well! > > Thanks, > Matt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How ServiceNow helps IT people transform IT departments: 1. Consolidate legacy IT systems to a single system of record for IT 2. Standardize and globalize service processes across IT 3. Implement zero-touch automation to replace manual, redundant tasks http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=51271111&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
