Re: RE: DOS/EMC aka DeskNCrt now freely available

From: Randy Gordon-Gilmore <zephyrus@...>
<s>

>Do you have a DOS/Windows background and can tell me how much effort is
>involved in learning Linux and getting it and EMC up and running? I
>haven't seriously thought about it at all yet.

I have a little experience with DOS and MS Windows and a bit of Unix. It
took me a couple of days to get Tim's script and all the downloads and
successfully compile a system that worked. Compiling sounds like a
terrifying activity but it really isn't that bad. My only programming
experience was Fortran in the 60' and a bit of basic when it became
available on a DEC-PDP10 machine.

It is more difficult to migrate from MS Windows to Linux than from DOS to
linux because with Linux you will often use terminals and command lines.
They are just faster than clicking an X-Windows icon or finding a menu item
three deep in a K (start) menu. (And some folk think that MS copyrighted
windows. Only MS Windows with the frilly s***.)

With the EMC, you can get a lot of debug information by watching the
messages in a terminal window. Yes the commands are a bit different -- ls
rather than dir and such but these can be learned a few at a time. When I
started with it in the basement, I wrote the commands on the wall with a
felt tip.

And X-Windows is getting stronger all the time. X uses window managers
to create most of the visual environment that MS Windows users are
accustomed to. And you are able to select from many different managers and
many different themes. Not just the ones that someone in western Washington
State thinks you should be able to select.

Now, the clincher is that in one month, at NAMES, Paul will unveil the BDI
install. The Beta that I tested here installed here on a Cyrix 300 with a
420 Mb hard drive in about 10 minutes. There were just a few questions
up front about the kind of language you wanted to install, the keyboard, the
location, the kind of mouse and monitor. (It correctly found all of my
stuff) After a reboot at the end, the BDI came up using real-time linux
and the KDE desktop with EMC icons on it. This release will cost less than
a small family visit to a fast food place. I had about 80 Mb left over for
those huge contouring programs.

After that install, I copied over my run and ini file from the the PC that
runs my mill, moved the parport cable, added an icon and had my minimill
running in less than 10 minutes more.

If you are content to know nothing about Linus and Linux the BDI is the
way to get it. For those who have been typing impaired by that other
windows environment, it can all be done visually, including the install.

The BDI is based on Linux 2.2.17 and rtlinux 2.3. These are not the latest
and greatest releases but they are way ahead of RH 5.2 -- the last really
stable install. (I sound like a f****** ???? salesman) But I'm not done
yet because Paul has included the linuxcnc.org handbook and a Tcl/Tk
program that uses the math routines that Jon E has on his web page to write
G-code programs. Lawrence and Matt have added a few routines
for things like a text writer, bezel engraver, and a speaker grill drilling
routine that in thirty seconds will write thousands of lines of code and
take hours to run. (BIG speakers) Both of these extra programs can be
accessed from the X-Windows screen and are essentially visual rather than
text oriented.

With BDI you can begin to use the EMC almost immediately and only know
where the CDROM insert button is and how to get your PC to boot to CDROM
first.

Then you can begin to learn and experiment while the machine is making
chips because Linus has insisted that Linux be a real multiuser OS. And
you will discover that you have a motion system, the EMC, that is capable
of running anything from a Cartesian minimill with steppers, a six axis
servo driven mill, a robot, a hexapod, lawn mower, family Humvee, or
a model airplane.

Disclaimer: I hope to become the US warehouse and shipping point for the
BDI and stand to make about as much profit on it as I have on the rest of
my EMC ramblings over the last two years!

</rant>
Ray