Re: Linux vs. DOS

> From: Dan Falck <dfalck@...>
> >> From: "Matt Shaver" <mshaver@...>
> >> Well, there are of course two approaches to this. One of them involves

a

> >> soldering iron... I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the

imagination,

>
> Tim, make an adapter with a male and female DB-25 plug. Sort of a pass
> through connector that crosses signals to fit what you need. I have made

a

> few to adapt controllers that were using Dancam and then Maxnc. You

could

> pull it in and out of the input path as you test all these programs out.

I thought of this too, but just never typed it. I think that at this point
the best thing to do is figure a way to accommodate all the possible
pinouts with parameters in the .ini file. I'll get Fred to read this thread
and see what he thinks is a good way to proceed. Until then your adapter
idea is the best solution.

> >To be honest, you are the first person
> >to control a stepper machine with the EMC.
>
> Now you tell us! :-) The list has been quiet this weekend. I figured
> everyone was busy setting up their Linux machines like me. I just got
> Redhat 5.2 yesterday and have gone through some of the same things Tim

has

> been through, but not gotten as far.

When I read this I immediately thought of the movie _The Flight of the
Pheonix_, 1965. In this an airplane is forced to crash land in the desert
and one of the passengers claims to be an aircraft designer and formulates
a plan to build another plane from the wreckage of the first. When they are
nearly done it is discovered that the engineer is a designer of MODEL
airplanes, a fact he neglected to mention. The captain of the plane (Jimmy
Stewart) is furious and confronts the engineer who is a quiet bookish type.
The engineer defends his idea saying something like, "Well, the principles
involved are essentially the same..." It's a good movie, not like today's
stuff.

> I read in one of the READMEs that kernels can be compiled on other

machines

> and then inserted into a seperate system. If it could be pulled off for
> this, (enhanced RT Linux +Redhat 5.2) it would be a real timesaver.(Fred,
> Matt, hint hint ;-) )

I'm happy to send you mine, but it's somewhat specific for the hardware you
have. I'm also happy to compile you one to suit your needs (I run Linux on
a 350MHz P2 with 128MB RAM), but I need to know a bit about your system. If
you have an especially slow system this is a good idea, but you'll miss out
on the learning experience of rolling your own.

> I have been watching this thread and am saving all the notes. I hope to

be

> the second one to run the stepper EMC. Thanks for all the insallation
> advice Matt and Tim!

Let me know where your at in the process and I will do what I can to get
you going.

Matt Shaver