Re: [Emc-users] for PCW

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 11 March 2017 17:01:23 Peter C. Wallace wrote:

> On Sat, 11 Mar 2017, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2017 16:53:28 -0500
> > From: Gene Heskett 
> > Reply-To: "Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)"
> > 
> > To: "Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)"
> >  Subject: [Emc-users] for PCW
> >
> > Greetings Peter;
> >
> > I just ran into a 2nd dead module on this 7i90, encoder 2 says
> > everything is true/high. So I switched the wires & code to use
> > encoder 3, for Z-jog, and which its not all hooked up yet in the hal
> > file, it works fine so far.
> >
> > I bought me a pair of the static straps, and have not touched that
> > card w/o clipping on. Stepgen 2 was dead on the initial power-up.
> > And now an encoder-02 is DOA although the login/registration trace
> > at LCNC startup looks perfectly normal.
> >
> > What can be destroying it now?
> >
> > Thanks Peter.
> >
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett
>
> Usually grounding issues
>
> Any input swings with unlimited current > about 7V or < about -0.5V
> may destroy the FPGAs input (+voltages tend to kill the bus switches,
> -voltages the FPGA)
>
> Unlimited currents -0.5V are easy to generate if you have grounding
> issues
>
Its all on a star circuit now, using 1/4" tinned braid. I don't think 
theres any excessive bounce left. I have enough modules left to make it 
work, and I have one more card yet, so I guess I'll "wait for the other 
shoe".

Thanks Peter.
> > --
> > "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 
> >
> > 
> >-- Announcing the Oxford Dictionaries API! The API offers
> > world-renowned dictionary content that is easy and intuitive to
> > access. Sign up for an account today to start using our lexical data
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> > developer competition. http://sdm.link/oxford
> > ___
> > Emc-users mailing list
> > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
>
> Peter Wallace
> Mesa Electronics
>
> (\__/)
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> (")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.
>
>
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> world-renowned dictionary content that is easy and intuitive to
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> developer competition. http://sdm.link/oxford
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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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dictionary content that is easy and intuitive to access. Sign up for an
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Re: [Emc-users] for PCW

[Peter C. Wallace]

On Sat, 11 Mar 2017, Gene Heskett wrote:

> Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2017 16:53:28 -0500
> From: Gene Heskett 
> Reply-To: "Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)"
> 
> To: "Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)" 
> Subject: [Emc-users] for PCW
> 
> Greetings Peter;
>
> I just ran into a 2nd dead module on this 7i90, encoder 2 says everything
> is true/high. So I switched the wires & code to use encoder 3, for
> Z-jog, and which its not all hooked up yet in the hal file, it works
> fine so far.
>
> I bought me a pair of the static straps, and have not touched that card
> w/o clipping on. Stepgen 2 was dead on the initial power-up. And now an
> encoder-02 is DOA although the login/registration trace at LCNC startup
> looks perfectly normal.
>
> What can be destroying it now?
>
> Thanks Peter.
>
> Cheers, Gene Heskett

Usually grounding issues

Any input swings with unlimited current > about 7V or < about -0.5V may 
destroy the FPGAs input (+voltages tend to kill the bus switches, 
-voltages the FPGA)

Unlimited currents -0.5V are easy to generate if you have grounding issues


> -- 
> "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 
>
> --
> Announcing the Oxford Dictionaries API! The API offers world-renowned
> dictionary content that is easy and intuitive to access. Sign up for an
> account today to start using our lexical data to power your apps and
> projects. Get started today and enter our developer competition.
> http://sdm.link/oxford
> ___
> Emc-users mailing list
> Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
>

Peter Wallace
Mesa Electronics

(\__/)
(='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste bunny into your
(")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.


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[Emc-users] for PCW

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings Peter;

I just ran into a 2nd dead module on this 7i90, encoder 2 says everything 
is true/high. So I switched the wires & code to use encoder 3, for 
Z-jog, and which its not all hooked up yet in the hal file, it works 
fine so far.

I bought me a pair of the static straps, and have not touched that card 
w/o clipping on. Stepgen 2 was dead on the initial power-up. And now an 
encoder-02 is DOA although the login/registration trace at LCNC startup 
looks perfectly normal.

What can be destroying it now?

Thanks Peter.

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 

--
Announcing the Oxford Dictionaries API! The API offers world-renowned
dictionary content that is easy and intuitive to access. Sign up for an
account today to start using our lexical data to power your apps and
projects. Get started today and enter our developer competition.
http://sdm.link/oxford
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Re: [Emc-users] Thoughts on extending the life of the microsd's.

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 11 March 2017 12:02:36 dragon wrote:

> I doubt that you will ever hit the end of life on a quality SD card,
> especially a large size one. The writes that you are doing, and thus
> the number of blocks, are TINY compared to what the cards were
> designed for... photos and videos. You can also run a flash file
> system instead of ext4 if you like. Checking that noatime is set for
> the filesystem would have a far greater effect than all of the writes
> that you will ever do in daily use. While true at one time, this whole
> wearing out flash storage thing is almost a non issue for use cases
> like this nowdays.
>
How do I check that, and with the rube goldberg's hired hand boot configs 
used on the pi, how would I set the noatime option?

> Where you buy SD cards makes a difference. There are a LOT of fakes on
> fleabay or from 'other' vendors on amazon and such sites. The 'pro'
> series of cards are often of a much higher quality that the consumer
> ones as well.

One things for sure, the sandisks I bought at wallies are crap. Killed 2 
32Gbers in 3 days each.
> You can attach spinning or SSD disks via USB and it works just fine.

Great! assuming I pop for a cheap kingston 64Gb, whats the recommended 
adaptor I can feed from the 5v 4a supply?
 I 
> highly suggest using a powered SATA adapter though, even for SSDs as
> the pi just doesn't have many watts on the 5v bus to go around. I
> 'think' you still need to boot off of the SD card though. Just the
> bootloader, initram and kernel. Then your entire root and userspace
> can be on the USB attached storage or an NFS mount.

Or, since its megatons easier to setup, an sshfs mount?  I've putzed with 
NFS the last time I hope.

> In my opinion, if you have multiple machines of any given type (more
> than one mill for example) then it makes sense to have an NFS mount of
> some sort so that you can share NC files and tool tables, etc.

I've considered that, but the huge majority of what I've written for TLM, 
is not going to run on a machine with a third of TLM's spindle speed 
available. That thing has an operating envelope of about 5x9" in alu, 
2.5x9 in steel, and 4x9 in cast iron, where this ones a 12x36.

> YMMV

It always does.

> On 03/11/2017 10:29 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > Greetings all;
> >
> > When I setup LCNC on the pi, one of the things I did was to make an
> > R-Pi_nc_files directory on the rotating media of this machine,
> > copied all the .ngc files I have generated to run on TLM to it, and
> > cleaned out the nc_files directory on the pi, leaving only 2 files,
> > which will remind me when I see them that the directory on this
> > machine has not been mounted on top of that one.
> >
> > Thats by this one liner script:
> >
> > sshfs
> > g...@coyote.coyote.den:/home/gene/linuxcnc/R-Pi_nc_files/
> > /home/pi/linuxcnc/R-Pi_nc_files
> >
> > All one line of course, and the .ini file edited to point nc_files
> > at it.
> >
> > With all the config file updates I am doing as I work on both the
> > jog wheels and in due time the gear shift stuff when I've installed
> > the belt position sensors, that I am using up the microsd. It is a
> > bigger one, a Samsung 32Gb, so it will be a while before that
> > occurs, unlike the san-disk lookalikes that I destroyed 2 of in 3
> > days each.  Bad karma, and ruined my taste for san-disk stuff
> > entirely.
> >
> > I am considering doing the similar remote mount of rotating media
> > for the configs directory as it is getting 100x the
> > read-modify-write activity as I make this and that work. An sshfs
> > mount doesn't seem to be any slower than the microsd so far. But
> > since it gets a write to new .var files everytime I close LCNC, it
> > seems like a good idea.
> >
> > That mount could be incorporated into the above script as:
> >
> > sshfs
> > g...@coyote.den:/home/gene/linuxcnc/R-Pi_configs/
> > /home/pi/linuxcnc/configs
> >
> > Shoot me down if you think its wrong. :-)
> >
> > I do have amanda backing up the whole pi, so I could theoretically
> > recover to last nights backup state on a fresh Samsumg microsd with
> > a basic jessie install on it, but it does take time that I'd like to
> > forestall doing as long as I can.
> >
> > A 2nd alternative might be a usb to ssd adaptor but I've not
> > investigated setting up such a critter.  Has anyone else?
> >
> > Cheers, Gene Heskett


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 

--
Announcing the Oxford Dictionaries API! The API offers world-renowned
dictionary content that is easy and intuitive to access. Sign up for an
account today to start using our lexical data to power your apps and
projects. Get started today and enter our developer competition.
http://sdm.link/oxford

Re: [Emc-users] Thoughts on extending the life of the microsd's.

[dragon]

I doubt that you will ever hit the end of life on a quality SD card,
especially a large size one. The writes that you are doing, and thus the
number of blocks, are TINY compared to what the cards were designed
for... photos and videos. You can also run a flash file system instead
of ext4 if you like. Checking that noatime is set for the filesystem
would have a far greater effect than all of the writes that you will
ever do in daily use. While true at one time, this whole wearing out
flash storage thing is almost a non issue for use cases like this nowdays.

Where you buy SD cards makes a difference. There are a LOT of fakes on
fleabay or from 'other' vendors on amazon and such sites. The 'pro'
series of cards are often of a much higher quality that the consumer
ones as well.

You can attach spinning or SSD disks via USB and it works just fine. I
highly suggest using a powered SATA adapter though, even for SSDs as the
pi just doesn't have many watts on the 5v bus to go around. I 'think'
you still need to boot off of the SD card though. Just the bootloader,
initram and kernel. Then your entire root and userspace can be on the
USB attached storage or an NFS mount.

In my opinion, if you have multiple machines of any given type (more
than one mill for example) then it makes sense to have an NFS mount of
some sort so that you can share NC files and tool tables, etc.

YMMV

On 03/11/2017 10:29 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> Greetings all;
> 
> When I setup LCNC on the pi, one of the things I did was to make an 
> R-Pi_nc_files directory on the rotating media of this machine, copied 
> all the .ngc files I have generated to run on TLM to it, and cleaned out 
> the nc_files directory on the pi, leaving only 2 files, which will 
> remind me when I see them that the directory on this machine has not 
> been mounted on top of that one.
> 
> Thats by this one liner script:
> 
> sshfs 
> g...@coyote.coyote.den:/home/gene/linuxcnc/R-Pi_nc_files/ 
> /home/pi/linuxcnc/R-Pi_nc_files
> 
> All one line of course, and the .ini file edited to point nc_files at it.
> 
> With all the config file updates I am doing as I work on both the jog 
> wheels and in due time the gear shift stuff when I've installed the belt 
> position sensors, that I am using up the microsd. It is a bigger one, a 
> Samsung 32Gb, so it will be a while before that occurs, unlike the 
> san-disk lookalikes that I destroyed 2 of in 3 days each.  Bad karma, 
> and ruined my taste for san-disk stuff entirely.
> 
> I am considering doing the similar remote mount of rotating media for the 
> configs directory as it is getting 100x the read-modify-write activity 
> as I make this and that work. An sshfs mount doesn't seem to be any 
> slower than the microsd so far. But since it gets a write to new .var 
> files everytime I close LCNC, it seems like a good idea.
> 
> That mount could be incorporated into the above script as:
> 
> sshfs 
> g...@coyote.den:/home/gene/linuxcnc/R-Pi_configs/ /home/pi/linuxcnc/configs
> 
> Shoot me down if you think its wrong. :-)
> 
> I do have amanda backing up the whole pi, so I could theoretically 
> recover to last nights backup state on a fresh Samsumg microsd with a 
> basic jessie install on it, but it does take time that I'd like to 
> forestall doing as long as I can.
> 
> A 2nd alternative might be a usb to ssd adaptor but I've not investigated 
> setting up such a critter.  Has anyone else?
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett
> 



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[Emc-users] Thoughts on extending the life of the microsd's.

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings all;

When I setup LCNC on the pi, one of the things I did was to make an 
R-Pi_nc_files directory on the rotating media of this machine, copied 
all the .ngc files I have generated to run on TLM to it, and cleaned out 
the nc_files directory on the pi, leaving only 2 files, which will 
remind me when I see them that the directory on this machine has not 
been mounted on top of that one.

Thats by this one liner script:

sshfs 
g...@coyote.coyote.den:/home/gene/linuxcnc/R-Pi_nc_files/ 
/home/pi/linuxcnc/R-Pi_nc_files

All one line of course, and the .ini file edited to point nc_files at it.

With all the config file updates I am doing as I work on both the jog 
wheels and in due time the gear shift stuff when I've installed the belt 
position sensors, that I am using up the microsd. It is a bigger one, a 
Samsung 32Gb, so it will be a while before that occurs, unlike the 
san-disk lookalikes that I destroyed 2 of in 3 days each.  Bad karma, 
and ruined my taste for san-disk stuff entirely.

I am considering doing the similar remote mount of rotating media for the 
configs directory as it is getting 100x the read-modify-write activity 
as I make this and that work. An sshfs mount doesn't seem to be any 
slower than the microsd so far. But since it gets a write to new .var 
files everytime I close LCNC, it seems like a good idea.

That mount could be incorporated into the above script as:

sshfs 
g...@coyote.den:/home/gene/linuxcnc/R-Pi_configs/ /home/pi/linuxcnc/configs

Shoot me down if you think its wrong. :-)

I do have amanda backing up the whole pi, so I could theoretically 
recover to last nights backup state on a fresh Samsumg microsd with a 
basic jessie install on it, but it does take time that I'd like to 
forestall doing as long as I can.

A 2nd alternative might be a usb to ssd adaptor but I've not investigated 
setting up such a critter.  Has anyone else?

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 

--
Announcing the Oxford Dictionaries API! The API offers world-renowned
dictionary content that is easy and intuitive to access. Sign up for an
account today to start using our lexical data to power your apps and
projects. Get started today and enter our developer competition.
http://sdm.link/oxford
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