RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] EZ-USB

I am playing around with a USB approach, abet a lower priority project. I am
playing with an ACTIVEWIRE board with the USB (Cypress) chip and associated
glue chips and a header carrying the data leads. The Activewire comes with
its own 8051 and PC software including an API for PC applications. One of
the API allows the downloading of user written 8051 programs. My direction
is to use the USB chip as a timing chip. The PC calculates the
step/direction and the time between steps and sends via USB to the board
which does nothing but timing and outputting of steps. Perhaps its
desperation from trying to work around the timing problem in Windows. The
8051 on the Cypress USB chip is a 'super 8051' with (as I remember) only
three clock pulses per instruction cycle.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Stratton [mailto:stratton@...]
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2001 11:57 AM
To: cad_cam_edm_dro@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] EZ-USB


Is anyone actively working on a USB motion control interface?

I've been doing some looking into what would be involved,
and am getting tempted by the EZ-USB line from Cypress
(they bought out Anchor, which started it).

Basically these are 8051 microcontollers that hang off the USB bus.
The cool part is that the code for them can be downloaded over the
bus. The newer EZ-USB2 chips (which are all PQFP surface mount) go
for about $35. Development boards based on the older chips are about
$60-80.

It seems like it should be possible to get these devices to emulate a
subset of the ISA bus to work with existing designs, to talk to
something like the LS Digital encoder chips, and possibly to do step
pulse generation or direct PWM for a servo amp.

Chris

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble tracking down the state of USB
support under rtlinux - which is needed before EMC could use such a
device - in my mind a gating issue to making it worthwhile.

--
Christopher C. Stratton, stratton@...
Instrument Maker, Horn Player & Engineer
22 Adrian Street, Somerville, MA 02143
http://www.mdc.net/~stratton
NEW PHONE NUMBER: (617) 628-1062 home, 253-2606 MIT









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