Other platforms

Hi,

To Rich Gillen, and others:

you wrote:

>I am an outcast here right off because I'm a MAC user and most CNC
>products seem to be for the IBM users.

Well, I am an outcast on your campus, - so the difference should not be so
large after all.

But as I understand it, there is several distributions for Macs. My question
is - could anyone sum up what these computers have ?

I understand there is several models, but my question is:
- What processors do they use
- What possible interfaces do they have

I have spent a lot of time lately to set up linux on some IBM RS6000 computers.
They run PowerPC risc 604e processors, have both ISA and PCI slots, and the
motherboard have soundcards, ethernet, SCSII, IDE, etc. already installed. The
RTLinux system should work much better on these, than a intel based PC.

I have debugged some trouble with installing LinuxPPC, and supplied info to a
maintainer of a HOWTO for these machines. I have problems with it, because
the current distributions thinks it is a Mac, - and it is different. Linux an
XFree86 used to run on these, until they more or less made a common release
with Macs. So I have worked a lot to <try> correct things. It looks like SuSE
will come with a release.

Even if these are several years old now, - they looks like real good machines.
Better than normal PC in many respects. It could even been fun to see if it
would be possible to port EMC to this - but I guess that would be a lot of work.

For some strange reason, I have not been able to get much help on the problems
with these. They had a version 2.0.36 or similar running, but I can't find
the code. ( strange )

Victor Yodaiken did some initial work on the RTLinux on these, with help
from Cort Dougan at ppc.kernel.org ( I have been told ) I don't know much
about why the current releases has broken on these machines, - been in touch
with Cort - but his answer was very short. I am not much wiser what the status
is. ( I run linux on them, but have problem with the X server )
So, I am still doing some research on this.

I am not sure if this is any good place to post this, but on the other hand,
maybe someone could give me a very brief descriptions about my questions on
Macs, or any info on LinuxPPC.

If people dislike to say anything here, then I be happy if anyone could have
something to add. Just mail me. But a PowerPC or Mac should be able to run at
least some steppers.

Comments ?

//ARNE