Przemek Klosowski wrote: > On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 9:32 PM, Dave <e...@dc9.tzo.com> wrote: > >> The G540 is a lot simpler than the G100. Yes, the G100 was a disaster >> with Mach3. I'm glad I didn't buy one of those paperweights. >> > > What was the problem? I have seen vague reports that the original > firmware was broken and that there were updates that fixed it up. > I'm an outsider, but I think I know the general history. Mariss designed the unit using the Rabbit board. The Rabbit is a sped-up Z80, and asking an 8-bit CPU to handle USB or Ethernet packets PLUS motion control is really asking a lot. There were electrical/thermal problems with the Rabbit. Mariss farmed out the software and FPGA firmware to several people, some of who lost interest and never finished the job, and apparently never turned over the latest source code, either. But, I think the limits of the Rabbit were probably the real cause. The Rabbit just couldn't handle all the things it needed to. > Would G100 work with LinuxCNC? I imagine broken control loop might be > acceptable if you could replace it by EMC's PC-resident control loop > Quite possible, but how to you connect the real-time part of LinuxCNC with the G100? USB is out, and nobody YET has hooked up a real-time Ethernet in LinuxCNC. But, then you are still saddled with the Rabbit!
Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ For Developers, A Lot Can Happen In A Second. Boundary is the first to Know...and Tell You. Monitor Your Applications in Ultra-Fine Resolution. Try it FREE! http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-d2dvs2 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
