RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: G-code---for the new millenium

I must admit I had VBA (rather than generic Basic) on the brain due to another
conversation, and VBA does indeed imply Windows.
It is true that fundamentally, you cannot rely on timer-driven (or busy-wait)
pulse-train generation on Win95/98/NT/2000 (the jury appears to be still out for
XP). This does not preclude all the other possiblilties that do *not* require
pulse-train generation.

For instance if you are not driving a live machine this is not a problem.
Or if you are sending the actual move instructions to a separate system that
*does* have the real-time capabilities required, or you are using a "smart"
hardware driver, or...

By the way, if you *are* driving a live machine, one thing that is important to
consider is how much the driving program (e.g. the Basic code) would be allowed
to "get ahead" of the machine. If you keep them fully synchronized, the machine
might have to pause while the status of the last move is returned, and the new
move requested. This is a problem, to varying degrees, whatever the language or
environment.

If I don't have my acronyms mixed up, you could use CORBA (an open-standard
counterpart to COM/OLE) to connect the objects. But I don't know if VBA will
talk to the objects then!
-Kevin