Re: EMC questions, steppermod? & what/why amps

Ray, or other kindly EMC type dude ...

> I guess I missed the post of Freds that you responded to. Compaq does
> some goofy things in places. I've a neighbor kid who loaded one up with
> Mandrake 7.0 and he fought it quite a bit.

Just as it should be .... how else will he appreciate how far OS's have
come since the 1960's.

> It should work though as a
> first EMC machine. You will get better speed from steppermod

Eh ... speed ain't no biggy, I ain't in a big hurry at this point.

steppermod better than what? in comparison to what other EMC module
that I could be using except for the fact that I need steppermod?

Also if my skanky ol' 166 is ho-hum what Mhz CPU gets me into the
moderately zippy range ... minimum! (think .... still cheap and
available at your local "very used iron-monger", I don't want or
need a Pentium 4 :-) The 166 cost me $50 ... speaking of that anyone
got a lead on old school style memory for this creature I guess
I should really crank it up from 32M to 64M?

> with the 166 so you will need a bit of care selecting the stepper amps.

No choice here I have (4) PacSci 6410's, got um free and ain't
buying anything else :-) step and direction needed

if you want to have a peek at the specs for these
http://www.pacsci.com/support/downloads.html#6400

Why would I "care" what amps BTW?

Also someone mentioned in another post about having a network card
in your BDI victim (as we seem to be calling them) would be handy
... does this imply that BDI can be installed over a LAN? ... if
so .... very cool ... I'm impressed! In use I would like to program
on my CAD machine and up the file over a network to my dedicated
purpose machine control machine ... it has been intimated here that
this is also a possibility ... correct? How easily is this done
in practice? i.e. is there special sheeenaigans happening or are
we just talking a file transfer to the right directory where EMC
can see it?

I don't know if I'll end up going the EMC route ... I really, really
want to, there's something about getting something tangible back for my
tax dollars which is so appealing!!!!! I'm looking forward to seeing
the "beast" in action at NAMES and hopefully taking home a box to play
with .... who knows maybe I CAN return to those days of yesteryear when
men were men and VI was considered a snappy user interface .... yes I
remember ... I remember ... BUT I'VE BEEN TRYIN' TO FORGET! :-)

Thanks a bunch for your input,

Ken Jenkins
kjenkins@...