Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Interface options, headless boxen, and remote control ...

Ian Wright wrote:

> You seem much less 'ignorant' than most of us!!

Well, I'm trying. ;->

> I think the reason people are looking at the methods they are
> is that its a case of trying to find existing circuitry. Most
> of us just aren't up to designing stuff from scratch and most
> of the people who can design stuff won't share with the world
> at large (funny isn't it - the software guys spend thousands of
> hours developing linux and EMC and give it away free yet the
> hardware types jealously guard their 'black boxes' in the hope
> of making a fortune {this is a general comment and NOT aimed
> at anyone on the list!!!}).

Actually, there are a lot of open hardware designs coming out,
everything from prototype boards to microprocessor cores. There is
a company here in Jacksonville that is designing a royalty free/open
hardware design for an IBM Embedded PowerPC 405 on a PC104+ board
(which is very small). A PowerPC 405 can drive a _lot_ of I/O (all
types of ports are on-board) and do a _lot_ number crunching.

> There is a definite need for keyboard and display extensions
> to the linux systems dedicated to, or principally used for,
> machine control as most people just don't want to risk the
> main bits and pieces getting oiled up or full of metal swarf
> in the workshop.

And what I'm saying is that with Linux, you do *NOT* need a
monitor/KB/mouse. Just give it an Ethernet port and connect to
another machine (in another room if you like). If the other machine
is a UNIX box, you can use X-Windows' inherit remote display
capability to "send" the GUI to another box. If your other machine
is any other box (or Windows for that matter), you can use VNC to
setup a "virtual" desktop, and then send the pixels to any other
machine that has the VNC client.

One of the coolest features of VNC is that let's say your Windows
workstation "crashes," the VNC session is still running! Remember,
the actual GUI session is running virtually on the Linux box. All
the Windows (or other workstation system) is doing is displaying the
pixels and sending the keyboard/mouse commands.

So all I'm interested in is mixing a Linux distro that, by default,
is setup to launch X-Windows (the Linux GUI) under a VNC session.
So you just go to your Windows (or other box) and saying "vncviewer
192.168.0.100:0" (or whatever the IP address of your Linux EMC
machine is) and you're cooking (your Linux GUI is now in a window on
your workstation)! And you could install the distro from floppy,
which pulls the files off of your workstation. And you would create
that floppy on your workstation, by editing a few config files
(giving it an IP address, etc...). 90% of the software to do this
is built-into the RedHat Anaconda installer -- ready to be
"customized."

Ack, now I'm "babbling" about Linux too much.

> Also, with the 'improvements' to EMC requiring more and more
> computing power, it is more likely that people will tend to
> use their main computer for CNC control as it will be uneconomic
> to buy an additional high-end machine just for this use.

Not really. You can get a 1.2GHz Athlon, mainboard+CPU, for $150
these days with a 10/100 NIC on-board (ECS K7S5A mainboard, SiS735
chipset -- very nice, fast and stable). Closer to $100 if you want
a low-end Athlon/Duron. Add in $50 for 256MB RAM (or reuse older
RAM, the K7S5A takes both SDR and DDR SDRAM), see if you can get an
old IDE hard drive (or plurge and get a new 40GB for $50). The only
other things left are the enclosure ($50), floppy drive ($10 --
although you only need it for installation, so you could rip it out
of another system), and your "control ports" ($200-300 for a
multiport serial card -- or maybe just use the existing IEEE 1284
parallel port).

If you really want to get "fancy," you could splurge on the case and
spend $200 to get a 1U rackmount case. That little "pizza box"
would look cool in your shop. Okay, now I'm lusting after hardware,
I'll stop. ;-PPP

> It would be nice to think that we could tap into your skills to
> design and freely publish ways of making dedicated keypads and
> easily available LCD displays work with EMC.

Again, I don't think you even need an LCD display on the Linux EMC
box itself.

At most, maybe a "kill switch" on the Linux EMC box, but everything
else is controlled on a remote display in the other room. All you
need is Ethernet to your Linux EMC box -- and that's it! And no
"special software" is required on the workstation, only the 150KB
"vncviewer.exe" program.

-- TheBS

P.S. VNC is like "pcAnywhere" for everything. When you run the VNC
server on UNIX, it can take advantage of UNIX's true multiuser
capabilities, and you can have multiple virtual GUIs running. This
is how we use a dozen Solaris or Linux boxen at engineering firms to
given UNIX GUIs 50-100 engineers. You can also use it on Windows
too, but it only let's you view the single, real desktop (like
pcAnywhere). The flexibility of VNC is a little difficult to
realize when you first use it -- but after a couple runs, you'll
realize that there is little need for more than 1 monitor/KB/mouse
in your entire house. ;-PPP

VNC Homepage:
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/

--
Bryan "TheBS" Smith mailto:b.j.smith@... chat:thebs413
Engineer Absolute Value Systems, Inc. http://www.linux-wlan.org
President SmithConcepts, Inc. http://www.SmithConcepts.com