Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Sound card as frequency generator

Dan Falck wrote:

>
> Anne,
>
> Please tell us more about your expericences using the sound card to drive
> steppers.

After reading your post, I did a search and found that Aopen

> sells a quad output soundcard for surround sound. Could you use one of
> these to get where you want to go?

I didn't use it to drive a stepper. I fed data to an external "sound module"
solid state recorder. The device was programmable (play back sound #2 when
input 3 goes hi, etc.).

I would transmit the program, and when the receiving software in the microcontroller
got the terminator token it would start recording sound into the sound chip.

My biggest problems were that the software on the sound card didn't tend to be too picky
about inserting an occasional "pop", and while this wasn't bad on audio, it was devastating
to data.

I finally solved it by assembling the data and the audio into one long buffer and
transmitting that to the device. I used the javasound libraries for this, and never found
out if the culprit was the javasound stuff, the beatnik layer under it, or some gritty
driver under that.