EMC install was unknown

Wally 6800 +

I snipped this post and shifted it around a bunch in the hopes of making
it read from beginning to end. Sorry that the product is long. I trust
that some of those list members who are fond of ragging on EMC will just
ignore this post completely.

From: walter luikey <Wally6800@...>
<s>

>Some of us on this list have grease under out finger nails. For the
>benefit of that group, would you please translate your last message to
>identify the items in the list.
>Thanks a million.

The short answer here is that my install of the EMC (Enhanced Machine
Controller) was done with success on a cheap new computer.

For newer members of the list, the EMC is in part a US government project
to develop software standards for motion control. Since employees of some
gov departments can't conceal or copyright the work that they do during
their day job, this work (EMC) is in the public domain -- anyone can do
anything with it.

Some of us have applied this software to our mills and are quite happy with
the result. Others are less enthusiastic. Now to approach the answer
to your question.

>>Ray <rehenry@...> wrote:
>>List

>>I'd like to take a moment to thank all of the folk who made the following
>>message from my new EMC PC possible.

>>"The compile of EMC appeared to succeed perfectly.
>>[root@localhost nist1219]#"

Last line first. This tells who and where (root@localhost) I was when I
installed and what directory (nist1219) I installed from.

At its lowest level, the EMC is Source Code. These files are written in
three or four computer languages, C, C++, Tcl/Tk, and something called
X-windows. There are more than 1200 of these files in the place where
they are stored. (SourceForge repository) Each file is the code to do a
specific task for a specific device using a specific computer and specific
supervisory software. These files get put together into some kind of
interlocking pyramid when installed.

There are two levels of supervisory software that I use. The level
closest to the EMC is called a real-time operating system. This one
comes from some work that was done at New Mexico Tech and is labeled
rtlinux-2.2a. It is a collection of 6000 + files that make a pentium, or
clone, or other processor do specific tasks during specific time intervals.

The second layer of supervisory software that I am asking the EMC
to work with is a collection of more than 30 thousand files that folks have
come to call a Linux distribution. In my case this is Mandrake 7.0.

The message that I reported above tells me that when I asked my computer
to put all of these files together (install, make, and compile) so that I
could run them on my new computer, and expect it to run my machine, it
did the install successfully for the computer and software that I was
using.

I like to think of this task as being a lot like traveling from my house
on the end of my 1.5 mile long dirt driveway in the backwoods of Upper
Michigan USA to the specific address of a wonderful little restaurant in
downtown Linz am Mein, de. (my spelling is terrible here) The successful
message means that the owner has all of the cooks, bartenders, and
ingredients standing by and the waiter has my table ready.

Yes it is a long twisty journey, but you can get there from here. A
hundred thousand people have contributed to making it possible and I
wanted to thank each one.

The install is not always immediately successful. A single
incompatibility in that huge bunch of files can cause it to fail. As new
and different features are added to the system, it can be difficult to be
certain that those features will work on the wide variety of systems out
there. (Right now Will at NIST, The National Institute of Standards and
Technology, is figuring out how to get real-time simulation of motion to
work on some of the older Linux distributions.)

For the most part those of us who have taken the journey are here to help
first timers. That is what Bill had in mind when he thought up this list.

There are a couple of other lists that anyone interested in emc ought
also to belong to. The critical one is emc@... and you can learn
about it at www.linuxcnc.org.

Now I'll try a line by line answer.

>P2-350

350 megahertz pentium 2 processor in the box I got.

>64 Meg ram -4 Meg video

Ram size. the -4 Meg video means that the specific motherboard chipset
that i got (SiS630) uses some of this memory to store video rather than
using it's own. Yes this can be a significant problem when we define
shared memory for the EMC.

>Tiger kit

I bought the cheapest kit that tigerdirect.com had at the moment. I was
uncertain that this box would work well for Linux. But I wanted to try.

>slot 1 and slot 370 motherboard

I don't really like pentiums or slot 1. I believe, along with many
hardware gurus, that socket 7 is going to be here for a long time on the
low end of computing. And that socket 7 AMD K6 stuff runs all over Intel.
But I already have two socket 7 so I thought this would be good for
comparison.

>4.3 gig drive

The entire EMC system can be constructed in about 1.5 meg so this size
allowed plenty of room.

>Mandrake 7.0

The distribution that I have chosen to support. It's everywhere in the
US. Aging a little now but still viable. This is a label like Microsoft
Windows 95. It just defines a system.

>Linux 2.2.14

This is the specific version of the Linux Operating System Kernel that is
used in the distribution above. To push the MS Win95 example a little
further, there was a 16 bit version, a 32 bit version, and a bunch of
different service packs that made that system act in different ways. Well
2.2.14 just tells which specific set of stuff works at the heart of this
Linux OS.

>rtlinux 2.2a

This is the exact file name of the real time operating system that I used
with this install. It is about 16 meg big and can be downloaded from
RTlinux.org.

>15" monitor 1024x768

Hey, this is the ultra cheapie re-certified, used on a secretaries desk
kind of thing that many can pick up for 10 bucks at a flea market. We only
have flea-sized markets around here.

>Total Investment < $400.00

This was my total investment in a device that can run up to six steppers
using the on-board parallel port. I confess that I already had the
Mandrake. ($34.00) But since Linux, rtlinux, and EMC are all public
license it is permitted to load all of the stuff that I used here on as
many machines as I want.

I know of one ISP that has loaded 1200 servers from a single CD. IBM
loaded a bookstore copy of RedHat 5.1 on 64 networked PC's and
demonstrated faster rendering than the best Cray (supercomputer) at the
time.

>Time to setup, copy, compile, and test about 3 hours.

Yes, Ballendo is correct. RayH has had prior experience with the packages
that he installed. I am amazed at how quickly one can archive legendary
status, well beyond any reality, in this virtual world. Fact is I was a
complete newbee 1.5 years ago. I did take a Fortran programming class
back in the IBM punch card days and have a lot of experience with hanging
chad.-- and hanging around the submission desk. (No I wouldn't help the
state of Florida)

I know nothing of make files, precious little C, C++ is mistifying. And
Ballendo was correct long ago when he indirectly referred to me as an
amateur programmer. I am that, and then only in Tcl/Tk.

The nut of all this is that if I can walk the EMC walk and talk the
EMC talk, many of you'se guys can also.

>Happy Holidays!

I'll be off list for a couple weeks. Remember that little restaurant,
they have my table ready. --

Ray