NIST 274NGC bugs -Say what??

Jon:

Sorry for the OT, just wanted to set the record straight.

>>> I'm afraid Art has made it pretty clear he doesn't WANT to report any
> of this, as it would reduce the advantage his

I have made no such thing evident. I have sent the entire driver code to
someone who wished to work on a driver to support the servo-to-go for
example. While my source is closed, it is simply a matter of no
documentation and a source only I can really understand as a result. With
over 1000 users, I answer up to 100 emails a day (every day , 7 days a
week. ). I have had several requests for information on attaching to Mach2
and support as well as I can in that direction, but to change the driver in
MAch2 is not like in EMC, Windows is a very complex driver user and all who
have checked have decided it is simply impossible. What I have done as well
is to release to the public domain the Gecko2003 firmware and the protocol
that Mach2 uses for it at the request of developers. I have also developed a
USB flashing routine and released it as open source. I think the future is
USB and am trying my best to support anyone in that direction.

I try to support anyone, anyone..who wishes to know how things are done
and have sent code to many people as a result. This isn't about protecting
source. This is mainly about time and resources. Mach2 is a very busy
project with at least 4 hours of code done every day. (again 7 days a
week.). Obviously my priority is to my users, I spend all my available time
recoding, adding features and discussing machine problems on the Mach2 site
as well as offline support for various machines. As a one-person operation
(and a hobby at that), this is so demanding I have no remaining time to code
special device hooks. I take approx 5 phone calls a day from around the
world, all support, and tests with various hardware makers on top of
everything else.

All one has to do is ask, if you need driver code to try to write a
driver, I'll supply it, but it has been looked at several times in the hope
of adding support for servo's and the best experts have thrown up their
hands and said "impossible", the driver is vastly complex to do its job in
Windows NT, and cannot easily be changed to do anything other than printer
port work. As to "He will make it impossible", I don't know where such a
thing comes from, certainly not from me. I write no code to "lock out"
potential users of any stripe or hardware. (What a waste of time that would
be).

As to the EMC source, you are quite right, I have used sections of it in
development of the Mach series. But while I have fixed many bugs, they are
not documented as I go and mainly pertain to the RS274 modules use in
Windows and the rotational speed fix, which I have explained many times in
detail how the rotation feeds are recalculated both on list and off. I have
stated publicly that the EMC authors are to be congratulated on fine code
and excellent idea's and anytime I can help, I do.

Jon, I really am not a competative person, I began here on this list,
added many things to the list, have tried to support all who inquire and
when specific functions or support can be done, I do them. Unfortunately,
due to the overwhelming time demands of what I do, some things are possible,
some are not. I have heard such comments before, it seems like the success
of the Mach series has put some noses out of joint for some inexplicable
reason, but this is not a planned or conspiratory thing, it just happened as
a direct result of this list. It began as a small program and with a lot of
work has grown to a rather large and popular one which takes an unbelievable
amount of time to support. The irony is , if I could stand Linux, I would
use EMC, I'm just not a linux freak, so I had to write my own for Windows..

Sorry for this OT letter, (if the list mom's let it through), but for some
reason some people like to think I'm running a conspiracy to defeat my
competitors. I don't have any competitors though. I write software, you
like it or you don't, no competition involved.

Thanks for listening....
Art
www.artofcnc.ca