On Sun, 2011-02-06 at 22:18 +0200, Viesturs Lācis wrote: ... snip ... > The thing is that for some time already I have been thinking of > bringing EMC from hobby level to professional level. ... snip ... > The problem is that I (with some hints from mailing list) might be > able to find a solution, if I need some tweak in EMC, but I definitely > know that I am not able to solve major hardware issues, like creating > an EtherCAT slave unit. > > So my main concern now is to find a way to find a I/O solution to link > EMC software and machines' hardware - stepper/servo drives, switches, > sensors etc. My first priority is reliability, second is > cost-efficiency, which includes not only price of the board, but also > the price of required accessories. ... snip ... > With the last paragraph I just tried to tell that I (and probably > others) do not want such surprises. I would like to be sure that my > intended I/O hardware solution, regardless if Intel change something > in their products' specs or no. Unfortunately I consider LPT port to > be history already (I know that many will disagree, but that is how it > goes - diversity of opinions drives this world). ... snip ...
I believe no matter what technology you invest in now, it runs the risk of going away tomorrow. Plus in the commercial world, even as expensive as the hardware is, the most important thing is product quality, reliability and mostly, support. If I were able to develop a commercial CNC controller, I would use the current well proven technology in order to present a reliable and capable product. Over time, the hardware will change. If one of my controllers breaks, I would probably replace the whole controller to minimize down time. The replacement would use the new current technology. Right now, the proven current EMC2 technology is PCI/FPGA cards and parallel ports. I would also look to industrial hardware similar to this: http://www.advantech.com/products/APAX-5000-Series/sub_1-CYHJKJ.aspx because that's what a customer would expect to see. I would not dwell on using consumer motherboards, unless they happened to fit the application. One can even still get systems with ISA slots: http://www.advantech.com/products/IPC-6006/mod_4512E8DA-A383-4F75-AB57-B4817793F5ED.aspx (Short URL) http://alturl.com/6r9uo If push comes to shove, in a commercial environment, it might be reasonable to design and build the controller boards needed. One just needs to be ready when the customer calls. For a commercial product, the thing that seems to be missing with EMC2, is a polished user interface. Tormach and Smithy may have addressed this on their products. BTW, MESA has PC104 boards and cabled PCIe. (The above is meant to be a good natured opinion.) -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The modern datacenter depends on network connectivity to access resources and provide services. The best practices for maximizing a physical server's connectivity to a physical network are well understood - see how these rules translate into the virtual world? http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnlfb _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
