> But a competitor to LinuxCNC in Mach4? Well as someone who takes CNC > technical support calls everyday, my opinion is tainted by Mach3. > > Not only does the Mach3 interface remind me of three-year-olds with > crayons with all of its flashy thingies and inconsistent methods, but > Mach3 is full of bugs that I doubt that the developers are even aware > of. I think its terrible that they charge $175 for a license without > offering sufficient support. They take your money but then instruct you > to fill all of your support needs through the community. I would NEVER > buy a brand-new retail product from any company without having a > telephone number to call them on. > >
A lot of hobbyists look at it as the entrance fee to get into the "club" so they can participate in the forum, which is really the basis for Mach3's support. Compared to anything CNC related, $175 is pretty cheap. For instance - a single Gecko 203V stepper drive going for about $140 now. Still, if I have problems with a Gecko 203V drive I can pickup the phone and call them and they do answer the phone. The last time I called Geckodrive with a tech issue on a G540 drive earlier this year, Marris answered the phone (the founder of the company) and I talked with him for almost an hour! > Why do I think they are unaware of the bugs? Because they don't have any > bug reporting built into the software, and they don't have a phone to > call. Some users will go through the support forums, but most of them > are calling us. They used to call Keling, too - but he got sick of all > the Mach3 calls so he quit publishing his phone number (although it > looks like he decided to give it another try upon launching his re-brand). > > You might know this, but there was a bug tracking system setup a while ago.. and lots and lots of bugs were reported and the list started to get pretty long. After a while, the list disappeared. For some reason it wasn't working so good?? So it was quietly removed. Hmm.... > At least once a week we are able to fix a Mach3 issue by uninstalling > and reinstalling Mach3 - often times because Mach3 quit accessing the > parallel port. But most of the time the issues are just bizarre > behavior, like moving over 4" in the Y approx 2 hours into a 4 hour > file, and continuing like nothing happened. Very hard to witness because > of the time frame, but also impossible to resolve. > > More than a few XML file corruption issues also I suppose? There has been known structural issues with the Mach3 for years, and that is really the gist of why Mach4 is being developed from "scratch" more or less. There is too much to fix in Mach3. > Most people choose Mach3 because they want to have a single box to run > their CAD, CAM,& control software on, or they are just afraid of Linux. > What is not obvious is that to get it to even be half-way reliable - you > have to strip down Windows to bare bones operation and never run any > other software on that machine - which completely defeats the purpose. > > In Mach3's defense - I imagine that most of its problems comes from > Windows. But loading a driver that sits underneath Windows (as it was > described to me) is a hack, at best - and it just sounds dirty. > > Windows is not real time by a long shot. However much of Mach3 was written with the premise that tasks "will" execute in a timely manner, even though that cannot be guaranteed with Windows. So Mach3 works "most of the time"... unless those exceptions occur. Then... not so well. Hopefully Mach4 will operate in a different manner. That said; I have had good luck using Mach3 in the past on some commercial machines by stripping Windows down to almost nothing, (no other programs run at the same time), I don't use any fancy VB macros, and I offload other logic tasks to a small PLC connected to Mach3 via Modbus. The PC only runs Gcode and communicates to the PLC to turn bits on and off via Mcodes. Beyond that I use LinuxCNC as it is much more powerful, flexible, and reliable. > Will Mach4 be any better? I don't know. Are they gonna start taking > phone calls? If not, then I suspect little will change in the bugs > department. If they can't handle all of the bugs on Windows given all of > its different hardware/software configuration possibilities, then why do > they think they can pile on more by porting it to Linux and Mac? > > Don't be joy killer.... Everyone needs to dream once in a while.. ;-) > With LinuxCNC, if you make it to the live environment from the CD, then > Ubuntu found all of the drivers it needs and it will install and work > flawlessly. Sure it can be more difficult to configure advanced features > - but that's only because it is far more flexible and powerful. LinuxCNC > also does not have telephone support, but LinuxCNC does not have the > sort of problems that require telephone support. > > So is Mach4 a new competitor to LinuxCNC - not in my opinion, not even > close. > > >Len > > I have to agree.. LinuxCNC rocks! :-) Dave ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
