On Sunday 03 February 2008 05:35, Jason Cox wrote: > as luck would have it, I was given recently an old G4 Mac. is it posible > to run EMC on a ppc32?
After proding a few people I know, some feedback.. The core library, libnml compiles and appears to be functioning when linked to the test suite. The Tcl/Tk bindings are pretty trivial, and as Tcl is part of a native OSX install, shouldn't present any problems (nor should the ncurses interface). Gtk frontends will need supporting libraries from Fink (or elsewhere), so they can be omitted for the timebeing.. This all allows tkemc or similar to run as a "native" OSX application, either G3/4 or Intel based. Looking at the realtime code, it is unlikely it would run within the time constraints required, so it would have to be offloaded to either an external Linux box or an internal "intelligent" I/O card. Some experimentation would be required to determine how much of the lower level code would run within the OSX IO Framework and what needs to move outboard. There are a few DSP cards available that could provide the realtime environment along with I/O capabilities for high speed stepper and/or servo systems. Running a Linux system on a G3/4 is simple enough - The majority of mainstream distros provide a PowerPC port, although some of the packages can lag behind in stability or version when compared to i386 builds. RTAI support is not an issue - Several patches are available for a number of kernels (2.4 and 2.6). Failing that, grab a copy of the ipipe development tree. Looking at the emc2 code base (under protest), it *might* be possible to build a native OSX simulator... But... Building a PowerPC version running on top of RTAI is also going to be difficult for similar reasons... It looks like there is sufficient interest in a native OSX application, and given a suitable I/O card, a practical proposition - Who else is interested ? Regards, Paul. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
