You might be able to get your laptop to run LinuxCNC but the odds are against you. Most laptop PCs have too much hardware that prevents the realtime Linux kernel from working well. Have you run the LinuxCNC latency test? It should be under the CNC menu. If you run it and then open a terminal and type glxgears to exercise the graphics and then open a browser window and move it around on the screen and maybe open GIMP and generally exercise the computer to create the worst case situation, and let it run for an hour or so like that as some of the interrupts that cause latency problems are very intermittent, and you get low jitter, then you have one of the few laptops that work well with LinuxCNC. There's really not much point contemplating using your laptop if it's not suitable.
Even if your laptop is suitable for LinuxCNC, most LinuxCNC integrators don't even consider using a laptop, so you would have a difficult time getting any help from experienced users. I think for many reasons, you'd have a much easier time, and you'd be much more likely to succeed, if you start with a motherboard that is known to run LinuxCNC well. Many of the motherboards with Atom processors are inexpensive and run LinuxCNC well. Or you could use an old desktop PC that has a parallel port. That should be a relatively inexpensive solution with a good chance of success. You can run the latency test on a used desktop PC from the live version of LinuxCNC booted from a USB flash memory stick without even installing it, to determine if the old PC is suitable before wiping the hard drive and installing Linux and LinuxCNC. If this is your first LinuxCNC project, stepper motors will be much easier than servo motors, and the cost will also be less. If you feel that you need servo motors, then I'd recommend one of the excellent PCI cards that provide an integrated solution that's supported by LinuxCNC. It'll be much easier to run a configuration wizard for the servo drive and digital inputs and outputs, rather than manually editing the LinuxCNC files yourself to interface the hardware. That's too steep of a learning curve in my opinion. If you have a laptop PC and some servos and based on that, you want to build a LinuxCNC based machine, you may be letting your preexisting hardware lead you down a difficult path. If that's the case, I'd recommend backing up and starting with hardware that will maximize your chances of initial success. Good luck! On 04/12/2015 04:46 PM, Abdul Rahman Riza wrote: > Ok, > > Lets make it easier for me to understand: > > 1. Can you suggest servo and its controller working on my dell 640m > laptop running linuxcnc-wheezy? > 2. As far as I know parallel port is something like LPT1 port for old > version of printers but nowadays we can't find LPT1 ports only USB port > and HDMI available. Is there any other way laptop as cnc routers > communicate to servos and drive spindle motor let say making 3 axis > vertical miling machine. > 3. I live in Indonesia, are there any LinuxCNC hobbyist nearby? > > thanks > > Riza ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ BPM Camp - Free Virtual Workshop May 6th at 10am PDT/1PM EDT Develop your own process in accordance with the BPMN 2 standard Learn Process modeling best practices with Bonita BPM through live exercises http://www.bonitasoft.com/be-part-of-it/events/bpm-camp-virtual- event?utm_ source=Sourceforge_BPM_Camp_5_6_15&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=VA_SF _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
