Re: [Emc-users] Will a PCI serial / parallel card cure port issues?

2017-01-27 Thread Jon Elson 
On 01/27/2017 05:56 PM, Gregg Eshelman wrote:
> If a PCs built in ports are too iffy to use with LCNC or other CNC software, 
> will a PCI port card work?
Depends on why the port is "iffy".  If the problem is low 
voltages, then the plug-in PCI or PCIe cards are pretty much 
ALL 3.3 V, so that won't help.  If the on motherboard port 
doesn't perform EPP mode right, then it CAN help, but a lot 
of plug in cards ALSO don't do EPP right.

Dell Optiplex motherboard parallel ports have all worked 
fine for me, and I'm picky, as they need to do the EPP mode 
right for my boards to work.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] OT, Vacuum Tubes Galore

2017-01-27 Thread Jon Elson 
On 01/27/2017 01:07 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Friday 27 January 2017 11:39:38 Jon Elson wrote:
>
>
>> And, a GR DigiBridge, very handy piece of gear.  We have one
>> at work.
> I've looked at that, but never could find the sheckels.  Darn it.
>
>
I have an older GR manual bridge at home that is also quite 
useful, and not terribly expensive.
Measures capacitors and inductors (handy if you are working 
with switching power supplies)
and also can be used as a milli-ohmmeter.  But, you have to 
twirl big knobs to find the null.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] Will a PCI serial / parallel card cure port issues?

2017-01-27 Thread Danny Miller 
A card doesn't fix much.  Basic problem is you're timing EACH step, 
which can be over 6KHz.  A single step being significantly out of place 
can create a stall.  The main source of jitter is in the CPU and 
chipset, not the parallel port.

The Mesa stuff, I believe mine is a 1ms period, and it's actually an 
overall plan, the FPGA will carry out the timing plan smoothly even if 
the packet is early or late, making it mostly insensitive to jitter 
problems.

Danny


On 1/27/2017 6:18 PM, andy pugh wrote:
> On 27 January 2017 at 23:56, Gregg Eshelman  wrote:
>> If a PCs built in ports are too iffy to use with LCNC or other CNC software, 
>> will a PCI port card work?
> Given the price of a 5i25 / 6i25, why bother with an actual parallel
> port cards? They can drive P-port breakout boards just like a p-port,
> but can work with much higher latency and can also step in the MHz
> frequency range.
>
> The difference in price is a handful of broken milling cutters.
>


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Re: [Emc-users] Will a PCI serial / parallel card cure port issues?

2017-01-27 Thread andy pugh 
On 27 January 2017 at 23:56, Gregg Eshelman  wrote:
> If a PCs built in ports are too iffy to use with LCNC or other CNC software, 
> will a PCI port card work?

Given the price of a 5i25 / 6i25, why bother with an actual parallel
port cards? They can drive P-port breakout boards just like a p-port,
but can work with much higher latency and can also step in the MHz
frequency range.

The difference in price is a handful of broken milling cutters.

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designed for the especial use of mechanical geniuses, daredevils and
lunatics."
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[Emc-users] Will a PCI serial / parallel card cure port issues?

2017-01-27 Thread Gregg Eshelman 
If a PCs built in ports are too iffy to use with LCNC or other CNC software, 
will a PCI port card work?
I finally managed to give away all but one of my stack of Optiplex GX520 boxes. 
I have 4 gig RAM and a pair of 80 gig drives in it along with an old PCI Radeon 
7000. That leaves one free PCI and one PCI Express x1. Could free the other PCI 
by going to a PCIe x1 video card, but I may want to use it for something that's 
only available in PCIe. (There are USB 3.0 PCI cards but they're expensive and 
while faster than 2.0 cannot come close to 3.0's top speed.)

The GX520 is really a GX620 that the PCIe x16 slot, two DIMM slots and all but 
two of the SATA ports have been left off. I could swap in a GX620 board or some 
of the GX700 series, but where's the fun in that? Would be too tempting to 
install 8 gigs, a nice GPU, faster Core 2 Duo (or Quad) CPU, big drive and 
Windows 10 on it...
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Re: [Emc-users] Eagle mill retro fit

2017-01-27 Thread Dan Bloomquist 
andy pugh wrote:
> On 27 January 2017 at 19:38, Dan Bloomquist  wrote:
>> Thanks. What I'm seriously thinking, is going Ethernet. I really like
>> the idea of not marrying the PC to the mill. But the likes of the 7i92
>> won't work with the 7i48.
> How about 7i48 + 7i80HD ?
>
Thanks Andy,
I came across that soon after I posted, gee. Yea, that looks like the 
winning set. And as Mesa vends the combo, I'll assume there is a .bit 
file ready to go. My son has CandCNC via ethernet. Really nice that I 
could pull his PC easily when he lost a hard drive, and fix him up. I 
kept an image of his system, learned to do that kind of thing a long 
time ago!

Hay Gene,
That is what I did also. Early 70's, I started bouncing around TV shops, 
fixing what the tube jockeys couldn't here in Northern California. I 
stayed at it and opened my own shop in 1980 after my son was born.
Best, Dan.

>
P.S. Sorry, I did it again and replied to Andy instead of the group. 
I'll get it stuck in my head to check that from now on.


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Re: [Emc-users] Eagle mill retro fit

2017-01-27 Thread andy pugh 
On 27 January 2017 at 19:38, Dan Bloomquist  wrote:
> Thanks. What I'm seriously thinking, is going Ethernet. I really like
> the idea of not marrying the PC to the mill. But the likes of the 7i92
> won't work with the 7i48.

How about 7i48 + 7i80HD ?

-- 
atp
"A motorcycle is a bicycle with a pandemonium attachment and is
designed for the especial use of mechanical geniuses, daredevils and
lunatics."
— George Fitch, Atlanta Constitution Newspaper, 1916

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Re: [Emc-users] Eagle mill retro fit

2017-01-27 Thread Dan Bloomquist 
andy pugh wrote:
> On 27 January 2017 at 02:45, Dan Bloomquist  wrote:
>> So what
>> I think I need is the Mesa 7i48. 6 channel servo output with quad
>> encoder inputs. but what I'm not sure about is which of the anything i/o
>> board I should use. I'm guessing that I don't need that much horse
>> power and the likes of the 5I24-25-SP should do?
>
> I like the 5i24, it's a lot of pins for not much money, and I have one
> in my lathe.
>
> However, you should also look at the 5i25 / 7i77 combo.
>
> Also check out Pico PPMC and the General Mechatronics stuff. Both also
> well-supported by LinuxCNC.
>
Hi Andy,
Thanks. What I'm seriously thinking, is going Ethernet. I really like 
the idea of not marrying the PC to the mill. But the likes of the 7i92 
won't work with the 7i48. It wants the likes of a 7i74 and 7i77 combo 
which is $170 more. And I don't know if I could get away with just 
making my own cable and using a 7i92, 7i48 combo. I'm going to run down 
what I can do with the other two vendors you provide.
Best, Dan.



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Re: [Emc-users] OT, Vacuum Tubes Galore

2017-01-27 Thread Gene Heskett 
On Friday 27 January 2017 11:39:38 Jon Elson wrote:

> On 01/27/2017 08:00 AM, Kirk Wallace wrote:
> > A recent Youtube discovery:
> >
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvbNBZX6kNE
>
> Yup, the triple nickel, so massive they had to make the
> power supply a separate box, or they'd need a crane to move it.
>
> > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A_NqNyvaBM=330s
>

That brings back memories.

I'd been fixing radios & tv's for smoke money for about 3 years, but when 
I got a job at A. A. Schneiderhahn Co. in August 1951 where they had 
a "state of the art service bench" where I serviced all the Zenith Radio 
& TV stuff the dealers couldn't fix in the all of Iowa and north half of 
Missouri.

Had a Kay Megasweep for alignment, and a Hickok 505 scope, ac, 
untriggered, but it was pretty much THE stuff in August 1951.  I was 16 
at the time.  I've pretty much had a scope probe or two at hand ever 
since.  At various times I have used quite a few of the tek scopes over 
the years, and watched them go to hell after the Tek/GVG merger. Today 
my personal scopes are a Hitachi v-1065, the std computerized dual trace 
delayed trigger for channel B, 100 Mhz scope first made in about 1985, 
and 2 years ago bought a gigahertz dual trace sampler. That Hitachi is, 
after all these years, still within its original calibration window 
which is why its still my favorite goto. And its brightness fade only 
shows up in a loss of writing speeds when looking for transients.

That little pocket DS-201 I bought 5 or 7 years ago now?  It still works, 
but the battery has swelled up and pushed the case apart.  Its bandwidth 
turned out to be less than useful around this machinery the instant I 
bought a Mesa 5i25 & put it in TLM's controller.

> And, a GR DigiBridge, very handy piece of gear.  We have one
> at work.

I've looked at that, but never could find the sheckels.  Darn it.

I also bought an HP Vector Voltmeter several years ago with an eye to 
building it a new probe, but gave up when I found the probe, which was 
missing from this one, was a separate service manual. At one point in 
the tail end of the 60's, HP could sell you a new one for around $1600 
bucks, but because it was so critical to get the sample timing dead on, 
they had to have the whole thing.  So I've a nice bench box that may 
someday yield a couple good 6 or 7 inch taut band meter movements. For 
what I paid for it, about $225 a meter. :(

Its been quite a ride since I quit school in 1948.

> Jon

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

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Re: [Emc-users] OT, Vacuum Tubes Galore

2017-01-27 Thread Jon Elson 
On 01/27/2017 08:00 AM, Kirk Wallace wrote:
> A recent Youtube discovery:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvbNBZX6kNE
Yup, the triple nickel, so massive they had to make the 
power supply a separate box, or they'd need a crane to move it.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A_NqNyvaBM=330s
And, a GR DigiBridge, very handy piece of gear.  We have one 
at work.

Jon

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Re: [Emc-users] OT, Vacuum Tubes Galore

2017-01-27 Thread Kurt Jacobson 
Kirk, that looks like a good channel! Thanks for sending it along for all
us kindred spirits.

I have three Tektronix scopes, a 533A a 545A and a 547, and absolutely love
them.  I use some hi dollar modern scopes at the universities nuclear lab
were I work, but I'd prefer my old analog scopes any day.

Here are some pictures of the internals of the 547 if anybody is
interested. The 547 actually has some transistors in critical places, but
still plenty of tubes to glow nicely in a dark room. These are absolutely
beautiful machines.
http://kurtjacobson.weebly.com/tektronix-547-oscilloscope.html

Kurt

On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 9:00 AM, Kirk Wallace 
wrote:

> A recent Youtube discovery:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvbNBZX6kNE
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A_NqNyvaBM=330s
>
> https://www.youtube.com/user/MrCarlsonsLab/videos
>
> --
> Kirk Wallace
> http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/
> http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/
>
> 
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Re: [Emc-users] OT, Vacuum Tubes Galore

2017-01-27 Thread Kirk Wallace 
On 01/27/2017 06:00 AM, Kirk Wallace wrote:
> A recent Youtube discovery:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvbNBZX6kNE
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A_NqNyvaBM=330s
>
> https://www.youtube.com/user/MrCarlsonsLab/videos
>

An attempt at being more on topic:
http://diyvacuumtubes.com/topic11.html
http://tubecrafter.com/tubecrafter_008.htm
http://www.publicsurplus.com/sms/auction/view?auc=1578928

-- 
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http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/
http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/

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[Emc-users] OT, Vacuum Tubes Galore

2017-01-27 Thread Kirk Wallace 
A recent Youtube discovery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvbNBZX6kNE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A_NqNyvaBM=330s

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrCarlsonsLab/videos

-- 
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http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/
http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/

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Re: [Emc-users] Eagle mill retro fit

2017-01-27 Thread andy pugh 
On 27 January 2017 at 02:45, Dan Bloomquist  wrote:
> So what
> I think I need is the Mesa 7i48. 6 channel servo output with quad
> encoder inputs. but what I'm not sure about is which of the anything i/o
> board I should use. I'm guessing that I don't need that much horse
> power and the likes of the 5I24-25-SP should do?


I like the 5i24, it's a lot of pins for not much money, and I have one
in my lathe.

However, you should also look at the 5i25 / 7i77 combo.

Also check out Pico PPMC and the General Mechatronics stuff. Both also
well-supported by LinuxCNC.

-- 
atp
"A motorcycle is a bicycle with a pandemonium attachment and is
designed for the especial use of mechanical geniuses, daredevils and
lunatics."
— George Fitch, Atlanta Constitution Newspaper, 1916

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[Emc-users] Broken tool detection.

2017-01-27 Thread Gregg Eshelman 
This looks somewhat useful. Doesn't do a thing for when a tool breaks while in 
the middle of being used, so depending on what's to come before the next tool 
change a machine could still FUBAR itself.

http://hackaday.com/2017/01/26/add-broken-tool-detection-to-your-cnc-mill/


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Re: [Emc-users] Eagle mill retro fit

2017-01-27 Thread Gregg Eshelman 
Wasn't but 2 or 3 days ago I saw something online for a brand new single board 
computer with PC104, and it wasn't insanely expensive. IIRC under $200. Of 
course I can't find it now. :P

 
  From: Przemek Klosowski 
 To: z...@lakeweb.net; Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) 
 
 Sent: Thursday, January 26, 2017 9:18 PM
 Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Eagle mill retro fit
   
On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 9:45 PM, Dan Bloomquist  wrote:
> Another question I have. Would it be a big deal to go PC-104? That would
> really keep the size of the new hardware down. I've never worked with a
> PC-104 before. The pc-104 version of the LX25 board is like $140 more
> than the PCI version. I don't get that.

I think PC-104 is only being kept around because of legacy issues
(industrial and military). I wouldn't put it in a new
project---everything about it is expensive, Even though PC-104 does
support PCI, it uses a non-standard connector so it's just a headache.
On the other hand, it does still have the ISA bus so it is much easier
to add your own hardware.
The small NUC boxes are basically the same size as PC-104---around 4"
on the side.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16856102141
   
 
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