Hi Justin, Clearly we're on different pages. Thanks for your input. John From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of justin White Sent: March-03-20 5:35 PM To: Machinekit Subject: Re: [Machinekit] Re: PICnc with Machine Kit. I thought I was quite clear about this. Not at all, probably because you are misunderstanding the purpose of the hardware you are mentioning in this post. This PICnc version requires Ethernet. LinuxCNC through a MESA Ethernet 7i92H or MACH3-4 through an Ethernet Smooth Stepper control hardware. I am going to guess that the MESA driver for the 7i92H also exists for MachineKit. You want to run "mesa" ethernet from the 7i92H on the PICnc? Doesn't sound easy and I doubt there is anything specific about the 7i92 in the hm2_eth driver other than the fact that the board types are probably added to the driver as they are released. MK is well behind LCNC in Mesa drivers so no idea if it works....you should probably test it. Mesa cards don't run at all on windows with the hostmot2 firmware that the MK/LCNC projects interface with, and nobody around here can use a "smooth stepper" because of the architectural differences between Linux Preempt kernels and the Windows way of doing things. Windows devices tend to buffer things in hardware to avoid RT requirements, which is why USB hardware is a thing in Windows and not Linux. The "Linux way" is to run in a RT capable kernel and minimize the "load" by having the hardware do the heavy lifting, but it is still pegged in real-time. So you're hardware is not going to just be compatible with both, there is very little that is as it stands. This is probably not the place to discuss your Mach3/4 Windows needs (it's making me cringe just thinking about it). Mesa does however have a "SoftDMC" firmware that is meant for WIndows applications. An FPGA is far more versatile than a micro so there may be something you can do with that, but SoftDMC will not run under LinuxCNC and I seriously doubt anyone here knows much about it. The MESA board I have has the stepping-PWM engines implemented in an FPGA. They all do, it's part of hostmot2 firmware, as are the encoder, Smart serial and a few other firmware modules. What I´d like, but what may not be possible, is to replace the MESA 7i92H with the updated PICnc. They functionally do the same exact thing. The PICnc is doing the stepgen, encoder, PWM stuff as firmware modules in the micro as well. The difference is ethernet, support, and an FPGA vs SPI, a dead project, and a micro If indeed the stepping engine is now within the PIC as well as the spindle quadrature etc..... It is and the board is in effect the Break Out Board for the machine then there is absolutely no reason you can´t have a single input serve as a local-remote switch. In remote it behaves like, say a MESA 7i92H and the buttons and display appear to behave like a pendent on LinuxCNC. In local it´s a DRO & PowerFeed machine controller with a bunch of useful buttons to simplify manual operation. That's not going to happen like you want it to, unless you are capable of writing complex firmware. Your best bet is to abandon the PICnc thing for what you want to do and call Mesa. Hostmot2 is "host-based-motion-control" it only runs with a host i.e. LinuxCNC. SoftDMC is something completely different and like I said, it's never really discussed in the Linux world. The Mesa cards generally have 2 EPROMs and one can contain Hostmot2 firmware and the other SoftDMC. SoftDMC may possibly be able to run by itself and take care of your "local" thing....I don't know. Now maybe this won't be possible without also having an FPGA duplicate what is done with say the 792H. Maybe this won't be possible at all with MachineKit. The PICnc already does functionally what the 7i92 does, just alot less of it and over spi. The PICnc sounded interesting as I've never heard of it before. the board isn't very interesting and the micro is too small, but the fact that the original designer made firmware and drivers for it makes it something viable for resurrection, with SPI IMO. Honestly your intended use doesn't sound very interesting at all because it requires way too much non-existent configuration and what you are actually trying to do is SUPER EASY just using an Rpi and a 7C80, 7C81, the original picnc...whatever. A DE10-Nano running MKSOCFPGA would do it all day. I'm all in for a Rpi based SPI Resurrection of the original PICnc. -- website: http://www.machinekit.io blog: http://blog.machinekit.io github: https://github.com/machinekit --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Machinekit" group. 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