RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Windows and black boxes

Bert:

A couple of things:

First, The PC without monitor or keyboard would not require a hard drive
either, so essentially you'd have the "single board computer" that has been
proposed on this list.

Second, something like TurboCNC would work nicely on this machine. However,
it would not be the same TurboCNC that Dave currently offers. TurboCNC would
be revised to be rom based (or to load into RAM on the SBC) It would have
the human interface removed and would have a few commands which would be
executed on command from an RS-232 port, such as execute a G-Code or
configure the machine. This would be a neat system, and could serve as the
Black Box.

This would be similar to what CompuMotor does for their motor driver cards
that fit into a PC. You simply download the executable to their "special
purpose computer" (FYI, the one I used was 68000K based) and then execute
the commands. It worked really well then, and should work well now.

This would be a neat project, as a $10 bill is the admission fee to get the
source for TurboCNC to use as a base and Dave's already done a lot of the
work.



|How about if that "black box" was a PC (no monitor or keyboard) running
|something like TurboCNC under DOS and accepting G code and/or other
|protocols over a serial port from a Window/Linux/Mac/etc. box running all
|the GUI stuff everyone seems to want? Everyone could get a box like that
|for less than $50 and it would be completely open source.