Hi John Thanks for the candid assessment. The difficulty with Rabbit and FPGA programming out on that system has turned off a few of the EMC guys I know of. IMO if someone needs to connect using Ethernet it would seem that several alternatives present themselves, from Ethernet enabled FPGA's to Ethernut.
Ray On Wed, 2007-01-24 at 09:02 +0000, John Prentice wrote: > > Regarding the G-rex - at one time I had plans to write a > > driver for it, and I have both the Grex board and the Rabbit > > development kit. But I have other things on my plate right > > now. For my own project, I've decided to use the 5i20, because > > I want to do some very non-standard things and the Grex has > > neither the I/O count or the processing power to do what I > > want. > > I have one (and the Rabbit kit) obtained for Mach3 work. As of today, Mach3 > will move its axes but with several limitations. New firmware is due around > now together with an API for the host computer (as control at a register > level seemed to prove difficult to accomplish reliably). I do not know what > the source availability of the API will be for porting from Windows/PC. > > At a lower level one can, of course, load anything into the FPGA and the > Rabbit but one does need to take account of the limited capability of the > Rabbit (a faster Z80 with memory management). Steve Hardy's firmware > includes his own design of custom CPU embedded in the FPGA to overcome this. > > The Ethernet (or I suppose at a pinch USB) communication link does require > difficult decisions about how to split the intelligence of a CNC contoller > between GRex and PC although the ethernet is beguiling for electrical > robustness and lack of reliance on mobo slot architectures. > > Geckodrive/GRex discussion is at > http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/geckodrive/ > > I hope this helps and is not too much a "statement of the obvious". > > John Prentice. > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT > Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your > opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash > http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
