> On 19/09/15 05:55, John Dammeyer wrote: > > WIN-8 and up don't support > > parallel ports or even serial ports directly. > > 64bit windows does not support parallel port. Even on 32bit W10 it still > works fine ... I have some legacy kit which is still going strong but we > had to move off 32bit XP for some spurious reason ;) Running a couple of > serial ports as well, but I think they are OK on the 64bit builds as well. > > -- > Lester Caine - G8HFL Ah, I didn't realize if you stayed 32 bit that support was still there.
However, your previous posting about cross platform movement of LinuxCNC to the Windows environment is interesting. The argument against it has always been that: a) hard real time is possible with Linux and isn't with Windows b) low level access to the hardware allows closed loop servo control with expansion cards like MESA for servo's or steppers. So given the cost of a MESA or other expansion boards perhaps a tightly coupled system using a BeagleBone Black (BBB) with a cape as the real time component and on a windows platform starts to make sense. The BBB has both USB and Ethernet. Also a lot more I/O if you don't use the HDMI video capability. One doesn't even have to move it to Windows immediately. It becomes a 'hardware device' like a what's already out there for LinuxCNC. It's possible it can even keep the real time components used in the MachineKit port so it remains a Linux hosted processor. So development and testing become a two part project. 1. Move the motion part of LinuxCNC to the BBB via dedicated Ethernet tcp/ip. Requires second Ethernet port on workstation PC. Surely 100Mbps Ethernet can handle data motion and position feedback to LinuxCNC software for screen updating and G-Code parsing. The Smooth Stepper can do it at a lower level on the non-real time Windows so Linux should find this easy? 2. When that's working and tested, port the LinuxCNC non-hard real time code to Windows C or C++ (not .NET though) There is a big plus to step 2 for the LinuxCNC community. The act of porting can result in code cleanup of LinuxCNC where normally sections are left alone because they work and there isn't any pressing need to change them. So old legacy stuff stays old even though now with experience it could be improved. Perhaps this idea has been bounced around before. But the BBB is not like the Raspberry PI or the Arduino. It's got an extra couple of 200MHz hardware processors in addition to the 1GHz ARM. The schematics and software are all public. The potential for an open source expansion is mind boggling. John ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
