Re: Digest Number 197

Andrew Werby wrote:

> New releases of linux, rt, or EMC could be burned in and distributed as a
> chip. The emc.ini file could be downloaded whenever the PC104 powered up
> so that changes could be made in EMC for each machine without a new chip
> being required.
>
> [This sounds like an excellent idea to me. But what does it really take to
> "burn in" a custom chip? I thought this was a megabucks process- has it
> come down recently?

No, not a custom chip, just programming a non-volatile memory chip.
You could use flash cards, like hold the images in digital cameras. There
are boards that treat these so they look like hard drives to a system, and
they are used extensively in PC104 and compact PCI systems. If you had
the right software (make files, mostly) you could build all the software on
any Linux system, and download it to the motion system. Actually, you could
also have a compact PCI system about the size of a brick that would do
the whole thing, with only the keyboard and video monitor outside.
The only downside is that compact PCI system cards cost more than a complete
desktop system at the local computer barn.

Jon