On 8/7/2013 8:26 AM, Paul Lacatus wrote: > On 07.08.2013 15:03, Viesturs Lācis wrote: >> 2013/8/7 Paul Lacatus <p...@paul-lacatus.ro> >> >>> Your idea is interesting but an Atom board is at a fraction of BB cost >>> that is about 50 Euro ? And what about parallel ports on atom boards ? I >>> will check. Thank you ! >>> >>> PS The BBW is just laying on my table ;) >> BTW Beaglebone is much easier to mount somewhere in the electronics cabinet >> The only thing that keeps me from using Beaglebone are the emails about >> hdmi and pru fight for particular pins, so there were some difficulties >> about them. I know that Charles has a working solution, but I do not know >> any details. >> Disabling hdmi and running the beaglebone headless is definitely a >> solution, but I know that I am not that advanced to set up something like >> that. >> > the BBW that I already have has no HDMI but has also low specifications > ( comparable with RasPi that I also have 720MHz Cortex , 256 MB ) than > BBB . I am prepared to use it headless with X11 server on other machine > . That why I proposed Raspi for an X11 server. I like Axis toolpath > preview and I don't want to loose it ;). On BBB I heard That is a > "bridge cape" that is solving the pin problems. >
Paul: Which are you---a machinist who wants to make chips fly or a computer enthusiast who wants to play with new hardware/software combos? Please don't think I'm being snarky. A machinist who wants a solution which "just works" would either stick with the oversize AT/ATX computer you already have or substitute a downsized, presumably Intel Atom-equipped microATX board with an onboard parallel port. The LinuxCNC wiki contains latency test data for some of these boards. The archive of this list contains messages about the headaches caused by the onboard graphics controllers of certain of these boards. If you're willing to use a RPi as the Xserver for a BBW then you should have no problem using it as well for any x86-based controller if the onboard graphics don't work out. I'm actually a great fan of separate Xserver terminals---what we used to call an Xterm, aka "thin client", last century. The neat thing is, you can try this approach right now to see if you like it, using your existing LinuxCNC as the Xclient. A computer enthusiast, on the other hand, may well wish to wade into the ARM world. There is furious activity on several levels in the LinuxCNC community which tends to be reported in more detail on the companion emc-developers mail list. I'm at the periphery of the developers, helping more to test their work than to contribute to it. Impressive gains have been made and there are some striking results (see for example Charles Steinkuehler's YouTube videos of his 3d printing) but I'd have to characterize the whole of the work as "not yet ready for prime time" but "real soon now" from the standpoint of the common user. Not only customized LinuxCNC software but also customized capes/interface boards are emerging should you choose to play. If I had to compare the total cost of ownership (TCO) of the two approaches as opposed to the first cost of the motherboard, I'd have to say they are roughly equal, especially if one puts a dollar/euro/leu value on one's time. [Please, gentle readers, don't start an email storm over this observation. If you like, I'll restate it as "all hardware approaches cost more than you expected."] Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Get 100% visibility into Java/.NET code with AppDynamics Lite! It's a free troubleshooting tool designed for production. Get down to code-level detail for bottlenecks, with <2% overhead. Download for free and get started troubleshooting in minutes. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=48897031&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
