Dale wrote:

>Hey Jon,
>
>Don't forget to read the rest of what I wrote and not the tiny little 
>snippet that Ray quoted.
>
Curiously, Ray's response beat your original message to the server by 10 
minutes,
so I saw his snipped reply first.

> I admit that "POS" may have been a bit harsh. 
>  
>
I really think so.  I worked with a version about 5 years earlier than 
your first, and while
there WERE a few quirks, there wasn't anything I'd call a serious bug.  
(Now, I did skip
some versions, and usually wait for things to get stable before adopting 
it.  Hey, I'm
not a sortware developer, I've got parts to make! 

> Even a Devlieg with your old AB control.
>  
>
Well, I first put a salvaged A-B 7320 control on my mill, and used it 
for less than a year,
starting in 1998.
It was pretty unreliable, and had 3 major breakdowns in about 6 months.  
I made up
some cables so I could plug back and fort between the A-B and EMC.  I 
tried EMC, finally
got it working after a legendary saga of install problems, and found 
several serious
problems.  I can't remember what they were now, but they made it pretty 
unusable
for machining.  I sent a request to Fred Proctor at NIST, and he sent me 
a revision in a
couple of days.  I cabled back to EMC, and the A-B was never turned back 
on again!
The A-B control DID have some nice machine operator-friendly features, 
but the performance
and reliability of EMC made me very happy, even though it occasionally 
hung up the screen
GUI.  That problem was fixed in early 1999, and it has been an excellent 
"tool", ie. you just
turn it on, and it does exactly what you want, and expect, every time.  
If it DOESN'T, it is because
I did something wrong, EMC was working exactly to its specs.

Now, one comment I should make is I do not use steppers, and have not 
used the software
step generation code in any of my machines or with the EMC-related 
hardware I sell.
There HAVE been some issues with that, including one that has apparently 
just been resolved.
Also, I don't use backlash compensation, as my Bridgeport has very tight 
ballscrews, and I
think that this is generally a bad thing to do, except on a drilling 
machine, maybe.

>You can email me directly if you care to expand on what "FUD" means.
>
>  
>
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt -- something naysayers spread to disparage 
something they
don't want to succeed.

Jon

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