Re: [Emc-users] Automatic Z-axis touchoff ?
Niels Jalling wrote: Now I would like to have automatic Z-axis touchoff using the last input pin on my lpt-port and a touch plate but this will give an active state with a closed circuit. you can use parport.0.pin-**-in-not to invert the touch plate input signal. -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
[Emc-users] Multiple external Estop switches, Part Deux
Following Andy's advice to use the or2 function in my hal files, I started messing around trying to get both switches to work. Here's the original configuration for the Estop switch mounted on the control box: net estop-ext parport.0.pin-10-in # Control Box Estop net estop-out iocontrol.0.user-enable-out net estop-ext iocontrol.0.emc-enable-in The Estop switch on the pendant uses pin 15 on parport 1. Nota beni, both switches work by themselves, in other words, if I substitute parport.1.pin-15-in for parport.0.pin-10-in above, the pendant estop switch will work just fine. Playing around with the or2, here's the code I was working with: loadrt or2 count=1 addf or2.0 servo-thread net estop-ext0 or2.0.in0 parport.0.pin-10-in # Control Box Estop net estop-ext1 or2.0.in1 parport.1.pin-15-in # Pendant Estop net estop-out = iocontrol.0.user-enable-out net estop-either iocontrol.0.emc-enable-in or2.0.out On starting EMC2, with both the Estop switches out, the Estop button on the Axis display shows as normal. However, pressing either the control box or the pendant Estop switch does not activate the Estop, and the Estop button on Axis does not get depressed. opening up the Hal configuration tool, I can see the parport.0.pin-10-in and the parport.1.pin-15-in active, and the LED lit up. Pressing either one of those two Estop switches shows their respective LED light go out, but the state of the iocontrol.0.emc-enable-in LED never changes. Do I have a syntax error, or am I trying to accomplish something through the or2 the wrong way? Thanks, Mark -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject)
On 22 September 2010 04:15, Don Stanley dstanley1...@gmail.com wrote: If Anyone has a list of things needed it would be a life extender for me. Also if anyone has a favorite online store for these items I could work and live even longer. The D510MO comes with only a back panel and 2 SATA cables. www.mini-box.com has nearly everything you will need. (I can't see a P-port pin-header to D-sub adapter there) It is likely that your existing PSU will plug straight in to the mini-ITX board as the connector is a 24 pin ATX socket. I have a PicoPSU running off of system 12V power (which only occupies 20 of the pins). IDE drive compatibility might be a problem, Adaptors exist but I don't know how well they work. I have set my system up with a SSD drive (8GB) and so have a system with no moving parts. eBay has everything, but not in a centralised location. -- atp -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] PCB engraver, spindle solenoid
On 22 September 2010 02:50, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Solenoids are not generally linear devices. As the armature is pulled into the coil, the magnetic field becomes stronger as the air gap shrinks. Doesn't this depend on the design? If it is a pure solenoid the air-gap is constant, but the amount of plunger inside the coil varies in a linear way, which may be (but probably isn't) compensated by a linear spring. This is not the case for the typical relay-style electromagnet (also often called a solenoid) where the core is static and attracts a moving arm. -- atp -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Multiple external Estop switches, Part Deux
On 22 September 2010 10:26, Mark Wendt mark.we...@nrl.navy.mil wrote: Pressing either one of those two Estop switches shows their respective LED light go out, but the state of the iocontrol.0.emc-enable-in LED never changes. Reading the docs: http://www.linuxcnc.org/docview/html//config_emc2hal.html It seems that emc-enable-in needs to be driven false to operate. I assume that your switches are true normally, and go false when activated. I bet that pressing both switches works as anticipated. I got the logic wrong. This is your current truth-table: in0 in1 out 0 00 0 11 1 01 1 11 Which means that the e-stop will only activate with both switches pressed. I think you need to swap the or2 for an and2 (or an extra and2 if you already have one or more). in0 in1 out 0 00 0 10 1 00 1 11 -- atp -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
[Emc-users] retrofitting a maho
Hello everybody, I am currently in the proces of doing a emc2 retrofit on a maho mh400c. The maho uses a analog servo drive and motors from indramat. the servodrive is a indramat 3trm2. i am currently still gathering information on the build and how to hook up the servo amp to my mesa boards. i have the following boards: 1x Mesa 5i20 1x Mesa 7i33(TA) 2x Mesa 7i37(TA) if anyone has any experience about these servo amps i would like to hear from them, any info would be very apreciated. Peter Teurlings -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Automatic Z-axis touchoff ?
Niels Jalling wrote: Now I would like to have automatic Z-axis touchoff using the last input pin on my lpt-port and a touch plate but this will give an active state with a closed circuit. you can use parport.0.pin-**-in-not to invert the touch plate input signal. I would like to extend the original question: I want to zero my macine at max Z to (avoid tool crashing when a tool is left in the spindle) and then go down to the touch off plate. I was looking at the issue a while ago and didn't find how to solve it. The plan is: Go to X- home, Y- home, Z+ home. Lower Z until touch off reacts. Set tool offset to 30 mm (which is the touch off tool heigt). -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Multiple external Estop switches, Part Deux
On 09/22/2010 06:37 AM, Andy Pugh wrote: On 22 September 2010 11:23, Mark Wendtmark.we...@nrl.navy.mil wrote: That should be the correct logic. Neither depressed, no effect on the emc-enable-in. Either pressed, emc-enable-in sees a signal. It's an enable pin, it needs to go false to stop the machine. I am never entirely sure which colour is which in HAL-config screens though. Okay, misread that part. For some reason I thought I'd read emc-enable-in had to be true. I'll give that a whirl tonight. Thanks. mark -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Automatic Z-axis touchoff ?
On 21 September 2010 21:45, Niels Jalling ni...@jalling.dk wrote: What signal and what G-code can I use for the z-axis touchoff ? G53 G38.2 Z0 G43.1 Z#5063 Or something rather like that. (Could be a custom M-code) http://www.linuxcnc.org/docview/html//gcode_main.html#sub:G38.2:-Straight-Probe http://www.linuxcnc.org/docview/html//gcode_main.html#sub:G43,-G49:-Tool -- atp -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Automatic Z-axis touchoff ?
Ed Nisley had something in his blog back in April about touch off routines, there are some G code snippets further down the page that might help: http://softsolder.com/2010/04/14/emc2-ugliest-tool-length-probe-station-ever/ Martin Sven Wesley wrote: Niels Jalling wrote: Now I would like to have automatic Z-axis touchoff using the last input pin on my lpt-port and a touch plate but this will give an active state with a closed circuit. you can use parport.0.pin-**-in-not to invert the touch plate input signal. I would like to extend the original question: I want to zero my macine at max Z to (avoid tool crashing when a tool is left in the spindle) and then go down to the touch off plate. I was looking at the issue a while ago and didn't find how to solve it. The plan is: Go to X- home, Y- home, Z+ home. Lower Z until touch off reacts. Set tool offset to 30 mm (which is the touch off tool heigt). -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
Don Stanley said, in part: I was grudgingly coming to the same conclusion. I did some comparisons today. I could not believe the fastest computers in the shop with minimum graphics (the AMD Atahlon 64 4000+ we have trying to fix) only performs slightly better than a Pentium IV 400MHZ running EMC2. The trouble is, Don, despite various O/S-developers' attempts to hide the hardware, it simply is not true that, except for speed, all computers are kind of the same. For nearly a decade now, PC makers and their component suppliers have seen good profit margins in making two classes of PCs---media centers (which optimize for high throughput of audio and video with complex media-stream encoding/decoding requirements---think mpeg2, mpeg4, H.264,...) and game machines (which optimize for complex, detailed and fast changing computer-generated scenes including textures and the whole nine yards of graphics tricks---think DX8, DX9, DX10,...). In this same decade, electrical power consumption in the home and office has become a hot-button issue. The user's perception of the speed and responsiveness of these machines has almost nothing to do with the qualities we need in real-time control. The qualities we need for real-time control have been designed out of these machines almost inadvertently as other goals are being pursued with new, improved multi-core, multi-threading CPUs with their new, improved North and South Bridges, new, improved power management, and all the other hardware paraphernalia. Old, un-improved Pentiums end up looking very good when your foremost goal is consistent, low latency. When you look at the numbers of PCs and shrink-wrapped software packages that are shipped to consumers you realize that in comparison we constitute a market potential closely approximating zero. We don't generate any requirements worth considering in PC product planning. We just get to work with the result. Have you seen the Far Side cartoon of a frog with its tongue stuck to a jet plane that was flying over its lily pad? That's a metaphor for our situation. One might think that there's an opportunity here for an entrepreneur to build and sell EMC2-customized computers, but such a person would be a small-volume buyer at the mercy of fickle suppliers, and I suspect folks in the CNC marketplace like Jon Elson, Steve Stallings, and others can also recite chapter-and-verse about the burden of after-sales support for something this technical. The only way I could imagine making money is to build custom controllers that are sold as part of a complete machine-tool system with a high purchase price and high annual maintenance fees. Oh, wait, isn't that what I feel your pain and I know that trying to explain why you have it doesn't make it go away. A lot of us on this mail list and its companion developers list have been hoping/struggling/arguing to find a path forward that minimizes the pain. There's been little enough joy so far. On the positive side, once you get a platform that does function well with Linux/RTAI, then you have EMC2 and all that this implies. Regards, Kent PS - sorry, all, for my recent faux pas with my email subject lines. When it's been too long since my last cup of coffee, I tend to not to check closely enough before clicking send. -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 12:05 -0400, Kent A. Reed wrote: Don Stanley said, in part: The user's perception of the speed and responsiveness of these machines has almost nothing to do with the qualities we need in real-time control. The qualities we need for real-time control have been designed out of these machines almost inadvertently as other goals are being pursued with new, improved multi-core, multi-threading CPUs with their new, improved North and South Bridges, new, improved power management, and all the other hardware paraphernalia. Old, un-improved Pentiums end up looking very good when your foremost goal is consistent, low latency. I feel your pain and I know that trying to explain why you have it doesn't make it go away. A lot of us on this mail list and its companion developers list have been hoping/struggling/arguing to find a path forward that minimizes the pain. There's been little enough joy so far. On the positive side, once you get a platform that does function well with Linux/RTAI, then you have EMC2 and all that this implies. Regards, Kent PS - sorry, all, for my recent faux pas with my email subject lines. When it's been too long since my last cup of coffee, I tend to not to check closely enough before clicking send. Good post. Sorry to have snipped so much of it but... All of the above is what makes the ARM/Beagle-board port so attractive. We don't need blazing speed, just blazing interrupt response and context switching. Dave -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 09:19 -0700, dave wrote: On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 12:05 -0400, Kent A. Reed wrote: Don Stanley said, in part: ... snip Old, un-improved Pentiums end up looking very good when your foremost goal is consistent, low latency. ... snip Good post. Sorry to have snipped so much of it but... All of the above is what makes the ARM/Beagle-board port so attractive. We don't need blazing speed, just blazing interrupt response and context switching. Dave I tend to think, what is made in the millions that closely does what I need and can be modified to the task. I wonder if maybe a car engine or appliance controller could be used for EMC2. My guess is that it would be hard to hack the software on these, but the idea is that with the proper conditions, they could be had for free, or low cost. Though these controllers don,t have user interfaces, so a remote interface would need to be developed too. Probably the best bang for the buck is to dumpster dive for an older ATX PC. If you collect enough of them, one is bound to work. With my EMC2 PC's, I usually need to fiddle with the xorg.conf quite a bit so, getting intimate and spending quality time with this file and the troubleshooting section of the wiki is getting to be a requirement. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
On Wed, 22 Sep 2010, Kirk Wallace wrote: Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:01:24 -0700 From: Kirk Wallace kwall...@wallacecompany.com Reply-To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 09:19 -0700, dave wrote: On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 12:05 -0400, Kent A. Reed wrote: Don Stanley said, in part: ... snip Old, un-improved Pentiums end up looking very good when your foremost goal is consistent, low latency. ... snip Good post. Sorry to have snipped so much of it but... All of the above is what makes the ARM/Beagle-board port so attractive. We don't need blazing speed, just blazing interrupt response and context switching. Dave I tend to think, what is made in the millions that closely does what I need and can be modified to the task. I wonder if maybe a car engine or appliance controller could be used for EMC2. My guess is that it would be hard to hack the software on these, but the idea is that with the proper conditions, they could be had for free, or low cost. Though these controllers don,t have user interfaces, so a remote interface would need to be developed too. Probably the best bang for the buck is to dumpster dive for an older ATX PC. If you collect enough of them, one is bound to work. With my EMC2 PC's, I usually need to fiddle with the xorg.conf quite a bit so, getting intimate and spending quality time with this file and the troubleshooting section of the wiki is getting to be a requirement. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA Whats wrong with the Intel D510 motherboards at ~$80. I think they have ~8-10 usec latency with the SMP 10.04 kernel. Peter Wallace -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] PCB engraver, spindle solenoid
Andy Pugh wrote: On 22 September 2010 02:50, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Solenoids are not generally linear devices. As the armature is pulled into the coil, the magnetic field becomes stronger as the air gap shrinks. Doesn't this depend on the design? If it is a pure solenoid the air-gap is constant, but the amount of plunger inside the coil varies in a linear way, which may be (but probably isn't) compensated by a linear spring OK, you expressed it more accurately! Yes, the amount of plunger is the variable in that type of solenoid. Yes, with some careful design, it might be possible to set up a spring that nearly balances the change in force, and their design might do that. This is not the case for the typical relay-style electromagnet (also often called a solenoid) where the core is static and attracts a moving arm. Yes, the typical relay-style swinging armature solenoid is probably far more non-linear than the plunger style. Anyway, I'm sure this LPKF engraver will do FINE for engraving, and may be able to drill the larger holes. I hare REAL doubts that it could possibly drill .020 holes, unless there is a dashpot or something to limit the initial velocity of the stroke. I have done drilling with an air-bearing spindle and .018 drills on my Bridgeport http://pico-systems.com/wwspndl.html and it worked great with tightly controlled feedrates, but I'd hate to just slam those small bits into the board. Jon -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
dave wrote: Good post. Sorry to have snipped so much of it but... All of the above is what makes the ARM/Beagle-board port so attractive. We don't need blazing speed, just blazing interrupt response and context switching. And, the irritating part is, we still have NO IDEA what the real performance of the Beagle Board system is in this regard! There are some numbers posted by the French guys who did the RT-Linux port that weren't terrible, but they didn't look that great, either. OK for servo interface use, probably not real good for stepgen. But, that might be the RT_Linux and not the basic hardware. Jon -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Automatic Z-axis touchoff ?
some G code snippets A somewhat improved version of the probe length routines are down near the bottom of this post: http://softsolder.com/2010/06/15/water-bottle-spring-cap- repair/ Shorter link: http://wp.me/poZKh-1cI I found that using the G59.3 coordinate system for probing prevented messing up the G54 coordinates. However, Bad Things can happen when you interrupt the program: it may leave you in G59.3, with the origin far away from the touch-off point in G54 that you're expecting to use. I'm still putzing around with the code, but that simple pushbutton switch works fine! -- Ed -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 12:05:07 -0400 From: Kent A. Reed knbr...@erols.com Subject: Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system I feel your pain and I know that trying to explain why you have it doesn't make it go away. A lot of us on this mail list and its companion developers list have been hoping/struggling/arguing to find a path forward that minimizes the pain. There's been little enough joy so far. For what it's worth, I've had good luck so far with an Atom D510-based system running the latest 10.04 LiveCD. I'm using it to run a stepper-based system which needs 16,000 steps per inch, and can run it at 60IPM before the motors stall. Since a larger machine would likely not use 1/4-20 leadscrews, I think this comes close to a worst-case scenario. I flight plan with a latency of 15000us. It occasionally exceeds that, but seems to only be when I throw something big at it like a file copy. I'm using a hard drive right now, but I've tested running it from a USB stick, and I think the latency there is more stable. If I run it with glxgears already running and don't push big files around, it stays under 10k. I've cut a few PCBs on it, which involve fairly complex g-code programs, and didn't see any obvious errors. This setup was purchased new for around $175 shipped from Newegg. $75 for the board, $40 for a chassis/PSU, $40 for 1GB of RAM, $25 for a refurbished HD, and a few odds and ends like this parallel port header cable: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812196220cm_re=parallel-_-12-196-220-_-Product I'm just one person and I may yet run into problems, but I wanted to add a report of this combo looking promising. If there are any other tips besides disabling hyperthreading that will help with latency (e.g. maybe a particular flavor of RAM is better? Would 2GB be better than 1GB?) I'd like to know them, but as it stands, I'm 100% happy with my setup. -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject)
On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 5:50 AM, Andy Pugh a...@andypugh.fsnet.co.ukwrote: On 22 September 2010 04:15, Don Stanley dstanley1...@gmail.com wrote: If Anyone has a list of things needed it would be a life extender for me. Also if anyone has a favorite online store for these items I could work and live even longer. The D510MO comes with only a back panel and 2 SATA cables. www.mini-box.com has nearly everything you will need. (I can't see a P-port pin-header to D-sub adapter there) It is likely that your existing PSU will plug straight in to the mini-ITX board as the connector is a 24 pin ATX socket. I have a PicoPSU running off of system 12V power (which only occupies 20 of the pins). Hi Andy; It had not entered my mind to power the USC from the computer 12Volts. The old keep the noise out of the computer mind set. But the printer cable has already piped the USC ground into the motherboard. If the USC input filter capacitor is able to swamp any noise from the USC Isolated power chopper (on the new boards) that will work well on my boards also. If it does not, a high frequency cap across the USC power input will. You guys are making me smarter every day, thanks. IDE drive compatibility might be a problem, Adaptors exist but I don't know how well they work. I have set my system up with a SSD drive (8GB) and so have a system with no moving parts. eBay has everything, but not in a centralised location. -- atp I had Google searched before the last email and found nothing useful. After the email, out of frustration, I clicked the Book Store (Amazon.com), and there was all the Worlds D510MOs with lots of additional hardware. The D510MO manual indicates I have a compatible power supply connector (12 x 2). Looks like I am good to go in my old case with a D510MO and SATA disk. The only remaining Item is, buy or make a Header to D connector cable for the parallel port. This has turned out to be less aggravation than I expected (so far). And Many Thanks to all Don -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
[Emc-users] using EMC for a manual CMM
I recently acquired an old Starrett manual CMM. This machine has linear encoders and a Renishaw touch probe connected to some ISA bus cards in a 486 PC running OS/2. The system is currently working, but I'd like to get it going with a more modern PC. Starrett would be happy to fix me up - for about $17K. I could just use a virtualbox OS/2 installation on an industrial PC that still has an ISA bus, but I'm thinking that EMC should be able to do the job. I just need to read the encoders, do math on the numbers (three linear axes and two rotational on the probe), and have a fairly simple user interface to guide users through touching off points for diameters or surfaces. I think I should be able to do this with the parallel port or at most a Mesa card. Anybody tried this or have advice? Thanks, -- Ralph -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 10:29 -0700, Peter C. Wallace wrote: On Wed, 22 Sep 2010, Kirk Wallace wrote: ... snip Whats wrong with the Intel D510 motherboards at ~$80. I think they have ~8-10 usec latency with the SMP 10.04 kernel. Peter Wallace Nothing. It would probably save temporal money. But for me right now (and probably many others), if it isn't free, it's not in the budget. For a lot of new EMCers going as far as you can for free, might be a good thing. Upgrading to an FPGA card and servos can come later hopefully. Thank goodness this list is free. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
Thanks Kent; I guess my greatest disappointment is that was an AMD processor. I have been routing for them from their beginning, and Zialog and Motorola before that. If IBM had not chose to Dumb Down their PC to stop the threat to their computer line, we would have unimaginable computing capability in a chips now. The IBM move elevated the least capable chip set to dominance and crippled the superior chip manufactures. If the founder of Apple Computer had not been so anti industry (Commerce) in the beginning, Motorola and his product would have reduced or stopped the PC takeover. After that slow start Apple has been relegated to A Better Me To, while the world went about making the PC over to their liking (some for work and most for fun). I think you are totally correct, the industry has been hijacked for fun instead of work. Thanks again for helping try to resurrect a toy. Heres hoping the D510MO get the job done. Don On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Kent A. Reed knbr...@erols.com wrote: Don Stanley said, in part: I was grudgingly coming to the same conclusion. I did some comparisons today. I could not believe the fastest computers in the shop with minimum graphics (the AMD Atahlon 64 4000+ we have trying to fix) only performs slightly better than a Pentium IV 400MHZ running EMC2. The trouble is, Don, despite various O/S-developers' attempts to hide the hardware, it simply is not true that, except for speed, all computers are kind of the same. For nearly a decade now, PC makers and their component suppliers have seen good profit margins in making two classes of PCs---media centers (which optimize for high throughput of audio and video with complex media-stream encoding/decoding requirements---think mpeg2, mpeg4, H.264,...) and game machines (which optimize for complex, detailed and fast changing computer-generated scenes including textures and the whole nine yards of graphics tricks---think DX8, DX9, DX10,...). In this same decade, electrical power consumption in the home and office has become a hot-button issue. The user's perception of the speed and responsiveness of these machines has almost nothing to do with the qualities we need in real-time control. The qualities we need for real-time control have been designed out of these machines almost inadvertently as other goals are being pursued with new, improved multi-core, multi-threading CPUs with their new, improved North and South Bridges, new, improved power management, and all the other hardware paraphernalia. Old, un-improved Pentiums end up looking very good when your foremost goal is consistent, low latency. When you look at the numbers of PCs and shrink-wrapped software packages that are shipped to consumers you realize that in comparison we constitute a market potential closely approximating zero. We don't generate any requirements worth considering in PC product planning. We just get to work with the result. Have you seen the Far Side cartoon of a frog with its tongue stuck to a jet plane that was flying over its lily pad? That's a metaphor for our situation. One might think that there's an opportunity here for an entrepreneur to build and sell EMC2-customized computers, but such a person would be a small-volume buyer at the mercy of fickle suppliers, and I suspect folks in the CNC marketplace like Jon Elson, Steve Stallings, and others can also recite chapter-and-verse about the burden of after-sales support for something this technical. The only way I could imagine making money is to build custom controllers that are sold as part of a complete machine-tool system with a high purchase price and high annual maintenance fees. Oh, wait, isn't that what I feel your pain and I know that trying to explain why you have it doesn't make it go away. A lot of us on this mail list and its companion developers list have been hoping/struggling/arguing to find a path forward that minimizes the pain. There's been little enough joy so far. On the positive side, once you get a platform that does function well with Linux/RTAI, then you have EMC2 and all that this implies. Regards, Kent PS - sorry, all, for my recent faux pas with my email subject lines. When it's been too long since my last cup of coffee, I tend to not to check closely enough before clicking send. -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 15:58 -0400, Don Stanley wrote: ... snip I think you are totally correct, the industry has been hijacked for fun instead of work. Where would the Internet (and in someway EMC2) be without porn? -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject)
On 9/21/2010 11:15 PM, Don Stanley wrote: This is going to be an extra effort for me living on the back side of the moon in the Appalachian mountains where the nearest computer store isn't, and all this has to be done on the Internet. That is pretty much the norm for city folk now also... . ;-) Newegg.com and Tigerdirect.com are my current favorites. Newegg gets an order from me about once a month and they haven't let me down yet. They ship very quickly. There are some different makers of Mini ITX boards that use the D510 chipset but they put a LPT port on the back of the board and I believe that some have onboard IDE headers also. Do a search on Newegg for Mini ITX and they will pop up. Dave -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
On 9/22/2010 4:38 PM, Kirk Wallace wrote: On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 15:58 -0400, Don Stanley wrote: ... snip I think you are totally correct, the industry has been hijacked for fun instead of work. Where would the Internet (and in someway EMC2) be without porn? Uh?? .. care to explain further...?? Dave -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject)
Don Stanley wrote: It had not entered my mind to power the USC from the computer 12Volts. The old keep the noise out of the computer mind set. But the printer cable has already piped the USC ground into the motherboard. If the USC input filter capacitor is able to swamp any noise from the USC Isolated power chopper (on the new boards) that will work well on my boards also. If it does not, a high frequency cap across the USC power input will. The 12 V in a computer is incredibly noisy, as it powers the spindle motors and head arms of the hard drives. If you put a scope or voltmeter on it, you'd be amazed, it will jump between 11.0 and 12.5 V when there is disk drive activity. There is a large MLC cap right at the switching regulator input and a large aluminum electrolytic right at the power input terminals. I think you have nothing to worry about. The isolating DC-DC converter has always been there, the new switching regulator is not of the isolated type. Jon -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
Don Stanley wrote: If IBM had not chose to Dumb Down their PC to stop the threat to their computer line, we would have unimaginable computing capability in a chips now. No, not really. IBM has not been involved in the PC business for at least 4 years, now, they sold their name (for the PC line) to a Chinese manufacturer. The IBM move elevated the least capable chip set to dominance and crippled the superior chip manufactures. Oh, we're talking about almost 30 years ago, now. OK, yes, the I86 architecture is an abomination of incomprehensible magnitude. Check out Virtual DMA Services for Windows and you will find out there is an entire virtual 8088 IBM PC emulator in all later chips. WHY? So that the old PC games that took over a DOS PC from a floppy and then played tricks with the floppy controller (which used DMA) to verify that the floppy that had specially-formatted bad sectors was an original and not a pirated copy, would run under Windows 3.1! Yikes, what INCREDIBLE baggage to be dragging along. But, if your argument was true, ARM, SPARC, DEC Alpha and 68K architectures would run RINGS around the Pentium, etc. But, they don't. The problem is Gordon Moore's law has finally expired (long live Gordon Moore!) Notice that CPU speeds (about 3 GHz) have totally flattened out after 3 decades of continuous increase. Speeds have not increased at all in the last 5 years or so. Only some major technical grand slam that completely breaks the current transistor architecture will get us past this wall. Some things can be parallelized, and some can't, so more cores is not the overall solution. We have gone through pretty much two full nodes of feature size shrink, but speeds have not gone up, just how many cores can be put on a chip. Fundamental laws of physics have caught up with the relentless shrinking of size and increase of speed. Jon -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
Dave wrote: On 9/22/2010 4:38 PM, Kirk Wallace wrote: On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 15:58 -0400, Don Stanley wrote: ... snip Where would the Internet (and in someway EMC2) be without porn? Uh?? .. care to explain further...?? He's talking about computer porn, I think he means gaming and internet video, etc. Certainly, gaming has driven high-performance video cards down below $100, I paid $795 MANY years ago for a 1024 x 780 dumb frame-buffer VGA card for a CAD application. If the gamers hadn't created a market, the commodity cards that make open-gl applications like Axis possible would be over $1000. And, to an extent, gamers and the wide use of home and office computers have all made our computers vastly cheaper than otherwise. EMC, the original one, started out on Sun workstations that cost $50K each. Jon -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 19:48 -0400, Dave wrote: On 9/22/2010 4:38 PM, Kirk Wallace wrote: On Wed, 2010-09-22 at 15:58 -0400, Don Stanley wrote: ... snip I think you are totally correct, the industry has been hijacked for fun instead of work. Where would the Internet (and in someway EMC2) be without porn? Uh?? .. care to explain further...?? Dave I hear that after DARPA got the Internet started, text based e-mail and bulletin boards made it fairly popular for computer types, but (personally, I wouldn't know), but it was adult entertainment that really drove the network expansion and the popularity with non-computer types. Now-a-days it's consumer driven. I was exposed to Linux on bulletin boards, but didn't really pursue it until the World Wide Web came about. If we were still in the bulletin board age, EMC2 might not have gotten out of NIST's domain, although it's hard to keep a good idea a secret. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject)
On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 9:26 PM, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: Don Stanley wrote: It had not entered my mind to power the USC from the computer 12Volts. The old keep the noise out of the computer mind set. But the printer cable has already piped the USC ground into the motherboard. If the USC input filter capacitor is able to swamp any noise from the USC Isolated power chopper (on the new boards) that will work well on my boards also. If it does not, a high frequency cap across the USC power input will. The 12 V in a computer is incredibly noisy, as it powers the spindle motors and head arms of the hard drives. If you put a scope or voltmeter on it, you'd be amazed, it will jump between 11.0 and 12.5 V when there is disk drive activity. There is a large MLC cap right at the switching regulator input and a large aluminum electrolytic right at the power input terminals. I think you have nothing to worry about. The isolating DC-DC converter has always been there, the new switching regulator is not of the isolated type. Jon OK, thanks Jon. Now my Wall warts con go back to the devices they were stolen from. Don -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 9:40 PM, Jon Elson el...@pico-systems.com wrote: The problem is Gordon Moore's law has finally expired (long live Gordon Moore!) Notice that CPU speeds (about 3 GHz) have totally flattened out after 3 decades of continuous increase. Speeds have not increased at all in the last 5 years or so. Only some major technical grand slam that completely breaks the current transistor architecture will get us past this wall. Some things can be parallelized, and some can't, so more cores is not the overall solution. We have gone through pretty much two full nodes of feature size shrink, but speeds have not gone up, just how many cores can be put on a chip. Moore's law is alive, it's just that it didn't promise increased speed---the original formulation was that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 18 months. This was accomplished by shrinking the on-chip feature size, which allowed increased switching speed and decreased power consumption, and also enabled speedups via complexity: pipelines, superscalar/out-of-order execution, etc, etc. The recent clock speed plateau notwithstanding, the number of transistors keeps increasing. -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] (no subject) or, old system vs new system
Kirk Wallace wrote: I hear that after DARPA got the Internet started, text based e-mail and bulletin boards made it fairly popular for computer types, but (personally, I wouldn't know), but it was adult entertainment that really drove the network expansion and the popularity with non-computer types. Now-a-days it's consumer driven. Real porno certainly had its dark corner on the net, even back to the EARLIEST 300-baud dial-up modem days. And, as Youtube and others show, online video certainly has a BIG following, in fact I can't get my kind OFF the computer due to all the damn videos. My wife thought she'd get rid of TV by not buying a digital TV converter, but - HAH - they watch more video now than before, just in 2 minute chunks. But, I'm not sure porno really was any kind of driving force in building the net. I was exposed to Linux on bulletin boards, but didn't really pursue it until the World Wide Web came about. If we were still in the bulletin board age, EMC2 might not have gotten out of NIST's domain, although it's hard to keep a good idea a secret. Well, it probably would have gotten out, anyway. I started trying to set it up in 1997, and actually had EMC(1) running here in 1998. I was definitely still on dial-up at that time, at least at home. And, I DID find out about it from the net! Jon -- Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
