On Sunday 18 May 2014 09:59:36 toolznglue did opine And Gene did reply: > Hi, Ray: > > I’m running EMC V 8.x on a couple of Sony PCG-F430 notebook computers. > These are 450 Mhz machines with 256 Mbytes of memory. Not particularly > fast nor blessed with oodles of memory. I’ve a Sherline Mill and a > Sherline Lathe. Currently, only the Mill runs CNC. I’m using > Sherline’s motor mounts and their motors. The Motor Drive is a > HobbyCNC “Pro” 4 axis unit; I’m only using three axes. > > By EMC’s stated requirements, these machines don’t have enough memory > to run EMC. By actual experience, they run Version 8 just fine. I’ve > not been able to get Version 10 to run on anything. It seems that > Linux starts up, but I get an error statement when I attempt to run > EMC. Since V8 runs well, I’m not too worried about it. > > The nice thing is that, with the exception of the first machine that I > bought new, these machines were from “buy it now” offerings on eBay > and came quite cheap. > > I’m also running EMC on a Cybernet Elite-II. This is a “computer in a > keyboard” machine with 1 gig of memory. I’m not sure how fast the > processor is. As with the Sony notebooks, Version 8 runs well; Version > 10 gives me the same error as it did on the Sonys, so I know that the > error is not due to insufficient memory. > > All of these machines are set up to at least offer a dual boot - Linux > or some version of Windows. In addition, since I play some with > TurboCNC, the Windows selection also allows me to boot directly into > unadulterated DOS with either Command or 4DOS as my command line > interpreter. > > Hope that helps. > > Jerry Jankura > So many toys…. So little time ….
I don't recall because its so old, if that release even had a "latency- test" or a "stepperconf", but the later one based on 10.04.4 does. These are invaluable because the data can be used to set things in the *.ini files that are as optimized as they can be given the results you will obtain. My first machine was a doomed to fail biostar with a 1400mhz athlon and 320 megs, whose capacitors failed about a year later, and it was so slow I was forced to run the base_thread at about 75000ns. Its latency jitter was so bad that I could only move the machine at about 3" a minute without stalling a motor. That jitter prevented anything remotely resembling a constant stepper rate, with most motor noises having a very indestinct pitch. A steady rate, is one of the items you will find will triple the speed at which you can move a motor. I've had at least 2 other machines driving that mill, a table expanded X1 sold by Harbor Freight, none of which was truly correct, so I finally bit the bullet and bought 2 of the shoe box ARK/Intel machines new, about $265 each dropped on my front deck here in West Virginia, The atom boards are the bees knees for this, with latency-test results in the 2 to 3 microsecond range. So my base_threads are now running at 27500ns, and I can move the machines z axis at 34ipm, 10 times the original result. I believe you can still get later boards than the D-525MW, with memory for about a 100 dollar (USD) bill. Very low power, there is not a fan on the cpu, just a big heat sink. You will need a sata drive, the lowest priced one you can find is big enough, and a sata cd/dvd reader for installing lcnc. The ones I bought were ready to go, and had a cd/dvd writer in them, along with the tiny power supply that runs it all. The atom based boards, with a 1.4Ghz dual core Atom, a gig of ram, are at this time about the pinnacle of the boards suitable for running Linuxcnc. When I finally got around to putting ball screws in my 7x12 lathe, which has a slightly higher voltage psu for the motor drivers, it is totally comfortable moving the carriage at 60ipm. With software stepping. That is something you will never do with that old hardware. Plus there have been so many improvements in the later releases that its even almost a pleasure to write gcode from scratch. And when you have a problem, you will have about a 1000% better chance someone will be familiar with it and can help fairly quickly, where with that old an install, most of us have forgotten 95% of that. I can blame it on oldtimers since my next birthday will make 80 of them. ;-) But my bucket list has a lot of unchecked stuff on it. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Accelerate Dev Cycles with Automated Cross-Browser Testing - For FREE Instantly run your Selenium tests across 300+ browser/OS combos. Get unparalleled scalability from the best Selenium testing platform available Simple to use. Nothing to install. Get started now for free." http://p.sf.net/sfu/SauceLabs _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
