Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] EMC in 10 minutes???

> William Scalione wrote:
>
> > If anyone wants the easy, brain dead EMC install I think we have a
> > winner. Dave Schecter
> > came up with a version that installs on a dos drive in about 500meg
> > Takes about 10 min to
> > get running. I tried it out and had no problems, rtlinux and emc fire
> > right up after the install,
> > and it even has KDE desktop. Dos/Win files are still accessible,
> > although long filenames
> > are truncated. I have not hooked it to a machine yet but it seems to
> > run fine. Sim.run came
> > up, generic.run needed only a couple file re-names.
>
> This sounds absolutely great, except that I know there will be problems!
>

yes but no BIG problems
the disk was built on one system,sent thru the mail ,installed and run
on a second system with no modifications
this is already something that many people insisted was imposible only a
few months ago
ZipEMC is made to install on a machine that is already running win9x and
you will still have a working system (it dosent harm windows) so you can
just reboot to windows and not be without a PC

> > Steps to install and run
> > 1) Unzip file to C:\
> > 2) From DOS type "linux" (computer boots to rtlinux)
>
> And, this will likely work on most systems with IDE drives. If you have
>
> SCSI, then it is a big MAYBE.
>

for SCSI systems you just edit the linux.bat file to boot linux from
/dev/sda(x) instead of /dev/hda1
the ZipEMC distro is based on ZipSlack which was originaly made to
boot from a SCSI Zipdrive on the paralell port ,the kernel is configured
for both SCSI and IDE hard drives, in fact the linux.bat file had to be
changed to boot from an IDE drive in the first place

> > 3) log in
> > 4) startx
>
> And, this is where the problems probably begin, for real. You can get
> most
> VGA cards to function at 640 x 480 without TOO much trouble, but even
> the
> mouse might not work by default. You need to reconfigure XFree86 for
> your video card and monitor to even do 800 x 600, which is the minimum
> that you can see all of the EMC screen at one time.
>

yes seting up X can get tricky on some hardware but its still easier to walk
someone thru an X config than to try to guide them thru a full blown
Linux+X+RTL+EMC setup ,97% of the work is already done
most problems with X come from trying the accelerated servers , seting up
for the wrong hardware (S3 server on a mach64 card?... no go) or using
an ancient monitor that wont do the resolution without tweaking anyway

ZipEMC uses the xsvga server by default with the xvga16 server as backup
this should handle most vid cards ,if you need one of the other servers for
your card they can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-7.0/slakware/x1
and installed with the installpkg,pkgtool or setup utilitys
a ps/2 mouse will work 'out of the box' for serial mice you may need to
set them up in xf86config
the ZipEMC distro is basically setup for the lowest common system config
and should work without much trouble on most off the shelf PCs
if the box was built from spairs out of the junk bin then problems are
bound to pop up somewere but they CAN be fixed

> And, a network would be nice, to send files back and forth.
>

use the netconfig utility script to set up the network
again the kernel modules for networking are already built
it just needs to be configured for your own network and hardware
as networking is realy an 'extra' for a CNC control this can be thought
of as one of the more advanced areas to get into and not part of the
basic install (ie; just make it work)

ZipEMC is not really a mini-distro it is a nearly full Linux distro
built on the umsdos filesystem and the usual Linux rules still apply
(ok Jon I know you already know these but here they are anyway)

-know exactly what hardware you have (write it down)
-read the documentation (evrything you need is there)
-learn how to configure and use it (NEVER stop learning)


Brian