Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Newbie: Which card would be suitable 5I23 or 5I20

Hi Sebastian,
Thank you so very much for such a detailed answer. First let me tell you that I
also got your name from Mesa-Electronics that you are working on the driver for
5I23.

Secondly let me explain my problem that I intend to build a CNC controller box
with LCD (something like on www.machmotion.com) that shall be attached with a
machine having malfunctioned controller; so for the sake I need a controller card that
shall fulfill the purpose for multiple machines (e.g. BridgePort Milling, Emco Lathe).

The card shall be PCI having enough I/Os to cover most of older machines.

Certainly I dont need to worry about FPGA size.

Finally its the card driver that I am actually confused about.

While looking through the hardware list supported my EMC2, I came into the conclusion
that Mesa cards are more feasible in terms of price and functionality. I also noticed that
more and more EMC2 users are using mesa hardware so there would be ample help
around for a newbie like me.

Now in case of Mesa hardware I found the 5I23 more appealing that in this card the
DSP is built in FPGA (so I believe more efficiency, correct me if I am wrong); I also got
a comment about 5I23 in cnczone.com forum telling that the driver of EMC2 exists for
this card so I contacted with Mesa for more information and they told me that its in dev
phase right now.

I think I should work on 5I20 until the driver availability for 5I23, what would you advice?

Thanks

Fakhar



----- Original Message ----
From: Sebastian Kuzminsky <seb@...>
To: CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 7:45:53 PM
Subject: Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Newbie: Which card would be suitable 5I23 or 5I20

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Alps Technologies wrote:

> At the hardware-end I am confused to select the card that shall work for
> some time. On the mesa-electronics website I saw different cards that are
> supported by EMC2 and I selected 5I23 but when I contacted the Mesa
> they told me that the linux driver is in development phase and would be
> available in a week (not sure if it would be tested enough to use for end
> product).
>
> Can anyone please guide me if I should wait for the driver to come o better
> use 5I20. I just need a motion control card that should be able to work for
> used machines of multiple axis.
>
> Thanks
>
> Fakhar

Hi Fakhar, I'm writing the new EMC2 driver for the Mesa boards. It will
work with the HostMot2 firmware. Eventually it will support all their
Anything I/O boards, but it doesnt do that yet. The first release is a
week or two away, it will support the 7i43 and the 5i20.

An existing, widely used EMC2 driver supports the 5i20 with an earlier
version of the HostMot firmware.

The new driver has not been well tested yet. An early prototype version
has been in the EMC2 CVS tree for a few months, but as far as I know no
one has tried to use it. I'm doing my development on a test bench; I'm
not driving a real machine with it, much less a production machine. But
that said, it's working well for me, I dont know of any bugs at this
time, and I'm committed to fixing bugs as they're found.

Your choice of cards should take into account (in order of importance):

* the PC-connection technology (EPP, PCI, or PC/104-Plus)

* the number of I/O pins it has

* the level of driver support

* the size of the FPGA

EPP is slow compared to PCI, this will limit your control loop
frequency. You can run a 4-channel servo loop at about 2 KHz with the
7i43, if you need something faster you should probably go with a PCI
card instead.

FPGAs are so good these days that even the "small" ones (like the 200K
gate ones on the 5i20, the small 7i43, and the 4i65) will happily
support 8 simultaneous servo channels, so I dont think FPGA size is a
real factor for this application.

How much I/O do you need, and how fast do you need it?

- --
Sebastian Kuzminsky

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
- -- Albert Einstein
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