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

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Alps Technologies wrote:

> 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.

As far as I know, the only practical difference between the 5i20 and the
5i23 is the size of the FPGA, and that the 5i23 can support 10 LVDS
channels. I think neither of these affect you.

Neither card "has" a DSP on the FPGA, though both can accept FPGA
firmware that implements a DSP. The 5i23 would be better if you wanted
to run DSP code on the FPGA, since the 5i23 FPGA is twice as big (400
Kgates vs 200 Kgates on the 5i20).

No DSP-based firmwares for these cards are supported by EMC, and there
are no plans currently to add support for them. Both cards will work
with the new "hostmot2" driver using the HostMot2 firmware, which puts
step/dir generation, pwm generation, and encoder counting on the FPGA,
and closes the control loop (using pid or whatever) up on the PC, inside
EMC.

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

I think your conclusion is right. The 5i23 doesnt add any capabilities
over the 5i20 that I think would be useful for you, and the 5i20 driver
support is a safer bet. If I totally fail at producing the new hostmot2
driver you could still use your 5i20 with the older HostMot firmware &
driver that's already in EMC and has been widely used and tested.


- --
Sebastian Kuzminsky

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