Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: supertech

vrsculptor wrote:

> Jon,
> Have you given any further thought to writing a driver for your
> parallel port/PWM servo amp's for Mach?

I talked with Art Fenerty about this at the CNC Workshop. He
says that because my boards can generate regular interrupts from
the parallel port, that it is feasible. That's a LONG way from
getting there. I have had all the register-level details of my
boards on my web pages since these products came out, with the
"hint" that I'd give as much help as possible to anyone who
wanted to develop drivers for other software. I simply don't
have the time to delve into it, learn all the software tools,
etc. The EMC driver is open source, so anyone who needed to
know how the board interfaces to the parallel port can look
there for ideas. The ring 0 mode that Art uses can't use
floating point, but I think that is a relatively minor
annoyance. Current CPUs can do software emulation of floating
point faster than early Pentiums could do it in hardware.

As I understood what Art was saying, Mach could send over
buffers of XYZ waypoints, and the driver would need to take
these in sequence and generate the right motor velocity to
make the machine follow those points. That doesn't sound all
that complicated.

Jon