EMC "Black Box" lives!

Right now I am running EMC on a "black box" (really it's a white box,
but who cares) connected to my Apple G4 Cube. It is running in the
backround as I type this email. I can switch back to it and check on
the progress of the cds.ngc file as it is run in simulation mode in the
plot window. Earlier, I had it running on my Windows 98 box and did the
same thing.

The ramifications of this are mind blowing. You could have several EMC
machines running with one monitor for them all. Space is kind of tight
in my home shop and I will probably run my lathe and mill from the same
monitor and different PCs. I could also set up my CAD/CAM computer in
the shop with EMC running in the backround. Or I could set up my
CAD/CAM computer to run in the house and access it from the shop. So,
now I can use Vector and EMC together. Maybe now it's time for me to
dust off the DDE option for Vector again and write some scripts to
automate running EMC from Vector.



How I did it:

I got EMC set up on a pentium 350 w/ 64 mb ram. I bought it for $50
from my boss.

I set up the the BDI 2.11 version this morning. It took about 20
minutes. Get it from www.yty.net/cnc/bdi.html
I had to set the network card to boot using netconf

Downloaded VNC from http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ and set up the
vncserver with a password

My Mac is already running XDarwin with a Unix versio of VNC, but I have
used Aqua VNC viewers before on this machine. My windows machine has a
VNC viewer on it and they work exactly the same way.

So, I booted up the BDI/EMC box, logged in, did not start X and then
started the vncserver

On the client machine, start the vncviewer, start kde, and then open the
EMC icon of your choice.

So, now EMC is running on the "Black Box", with no indication of it on
the monitor. But the GUI is on my main computer.

I am sorry that my description is so cryptic, but I just did it and
intend on writing up a better description after I try it a few more
times to make sure I get all the details down. I will try to put
together a web page about this and put it up on linuxcnc.org asap.

Dan