On 8/7/2013 12:58 PM, dave wrote: > On Wed, 2013-08-07 at 11:26 -0700, David Bagby wrote: <big snip> > Dave: > > Thanks for the nice synopsis. With all the neat stuff going on is is > difficult to keep up. > > IIRC Kent posted some info on running with a X server on another machine > and something to the effect that TkLinuxcnc took much less memory on the > client side vs axis. > > Just to clarify you are running software generated steps to drive the > Proxxon? Just to avoid confusion, I'm personally using LCNC to drive a Shapeoko rather than the Proxxon that the original poster asked about. - but that difference is not really relevant to the question you asked.
The beaglebone boards (BBw or BBB) use a system on chip (SoC) from Texas instruments (the AM335x series). Those SoCs have multiple processors inside and two of them are called PRUs (Programmable Realtime Units). The PRUs are internal CPU subsystems that can be dedicated to doing real time tasks. Charles has created some code for them that lets LCNC use them to do the step pulse generation. So from one viewpoint this could be thought of as "firmware generated steps", but from the LCNC viewpoint, it is a BB hardware step generation module that LCNC is using. The usual "software" step generation for LCNC is run on the x86 CPU and thus is subject to all the things that happen on the x86 CPU. Running that type of software step generation is one reason LCNC use the RTAI kernel on x86 machines. With the BBB, the internal PRUs are really hardware black boxes to LCNC, and the LCNC software step generation is neither used or needed. > Not really being picky but you might post a link to the K9 board. Any > pricing yet? Uh... the K9s have no pricing as they were not developed to be a product; We never intended the K9 project to be a product effort, rather they were created as a development platform to use for further BBB/LCNC software development. When you decide to ignore economics that way you get to throw lots of experimental stuff onto the K9 board to try out and play with - but some of the things on there don't make sense for a BBB cape product (ex: there is a sample interfaces for 1 encoder to use for sftw development while any real system probably needs more than 1). AS is the total of all the K9 bits and pieces would make for a silly expensive product. Those interested in more info as to what a K9 is can follow these links: www.CalypsoVentures.com/privatedl/K9/K9_SmorgasBoard_Overview.pdf http://www.pmdx.com/k9/K9-first-photo.JPG We hope that out of the K9 effort, there will emerge (eventually) K9 derivatives that could become future products and/or components of systems. Those interested in such things could contact myself or Steve at PMDX off list as I tend to stay away from speculative discussion of other people's plans in a public forum. > Keep up the good work. > > Dave Dave ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
