Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Who made the first PC based CNC control?

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>>Who made the first PC based CNC control? I would also like to know if
>>there was one around before IBM marketed the PC in the early 1980's.
>>
>Huh? How could this be? How could a CNC control be based on a
>commercial product that did not exist? Do you mean a CNC control
>based on a commercial minicomputer product, rather than a proprietary
>control/computer all in one? I saw a PDP-8 minicomputer used as a
>CNC control in 1972 or so, and it was old, then.
>

Uh, IBM PC was commercially introduced in 1981, and there were
microcomputers (Apple, for instance, and IMSAI, Kaypro, TI and a few
hundred others) well before them. The amount of processing power needed
to control the moves of a stepper motor is not particularly great. The
g-code interpreter would have run pretty slow, but even so it'd be
faster than a human operator.

My old Xerox 820 could have done it with ease, and it was based on the
same base technology as the PDP series. So could my old Cromemco
system...and that was a multi-user UNIX-based system from the 1970s! I
wasn't interested in CNC at that point, but there were no technical
limitations that would have prevented such a system from working as a
controller.

-- Chuck Knight