Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Black Box Goals

From: Mike Hutton


Remember I said PC case. The cases are cheap, buying a case with power
supply for $25-45 is common.
The PC motherboards keep changing and have way more than we need. That "way
more" means more
things that can fail. Also, it would not be very open. Not many of us could
reproduce a mother board or modify it.
If you based a design on a PC motherboard last year you would have a hard
time finding where you could buy it.
I like the simple board approach, but just let it fit in a PC case and use
a PC power supply.

Well, I guess it's not quite full circle.
mikeh

>> From: Mike Hutton
>>
>> I would like to see a "busy" LED, so I see if it is CPU bound or

something.

>>
>> The ability to fit in a PC case sounds good to me. They are cheap.
>
>Oh, MAN! We are coming around full circle, here. Maybe what we need
>is a program that boots off the floppy and runs on a stripped PC
>motherboard! Uses the parallel port for stepper drive, uses the serial
>or network port to communicate with the "host" computer. It might need
>a video card of some sort just so the BIOS doesn't scream.
>A PC motherboard IS an embedded computer, ie. single board computer.
>Even a 386 has more resources than most of the microcontrollers, too.
>
>Jon