Black box heaven or the real BDI

I'm going to go on a little slant from a couple of threads, so I
started a different thread to avoid muddying those others.

I'd like a black box that has EMC running on RTlinux. I just don't
want to SEE it. I want to SEE Windows.

My ideal configuration would have EMC on a PC without a monitor or
keyboard(maybe a pendant). It would have step and direction output
from the parallel port, and possibly encoder feedback. It would also
have a network connection to my PC running any flavor of 32 bit
Windows I choose(maybe MAC even).

Can I get a $50 Pentium 100 with an NIC card, use a real BDI(Brain
Dead Install) that makes this box into a dumb but networked
controller, and then run my machine over a LAN from a comfortable
Windows box? (better yet plug in a ROM, or boot from a floppy, but I
won't get my hopes up)

I know it takes 2 computers. One costs $50. The other probably
costs under $1000 but it likes me.

If I wanted to set this up what would be the required components
hardware wise, and how about software. Is this setup a violation of
the RT-linux patent license? Is any media sale of this kind of setup
prohibited? (Paul bring me one at NAMES. ;-), you really could pay
for your trip.)

What is the minimum hardware required to run EMC. A board that puts
out Step & Direction or can it run the parallel port direct, with
encoder feedback? How much is it? Can EMC put out Step & Direction
to the parallel port like MS-DOS?

Ray, do you already have a tcl script that does this?


Best Regards,

Fred Smith, IMService