Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] EMC2 Servo Loop

Phil@Yahoo wrote:

> Your approach makes a lot of sense. I guess it really depends upon one's
> priorities. A lot of people are intimidated by the prospect of setting up
> and maintaining a Linux system. I know that Ubuntu and most of the other
> mainstream distros have done a lot to make Linux look and feel like Windows,
> and in fact Ubuntu is actually easier to install. Unfortunately it still
> requires quite a lot more knowledge of computer science if you need to debug
> or configure anything that is not handled automatically by some kind of
> wizard, and the wizards are not as extensive or complete.
>
>

This is a continuing problem. One area is video cards. The Taiwan
makers of these buy a TWO WEEK
supply of chips, lay out a board and have them stuffed. They write a
driver and submit it to MicroSoft.
Two weeks later, they do it all over again. If you work out the math,
there are over ten THOUSAND
variant combinations of some really standard video cards over a two to
four year product life! This is
a TOTALLY insane way of making a product. So, the Windows-only driver
comes on a CD with the
video card. That doesn't do much good for the Linux community, which is
just trying to support the
more common variants of these things.

>
> I have an old Pentium 166MHz 64MB machine I'm thinking of using for a CNC
> controller, and I'm concerned it might not be fast enough or have enough
> memory for EMC2. I know the answer is to just try it, and I will unless
> someone can tell me, "don't bother, that definitely won't suffice." I know
> the EMC2 kernel is optimized for speed, but I presume the GUI still relies
> on X11, which I'm fairly sure is bloatware.
>

Nope, absolutely will NOT with with the later EMC2 full installs. It
might be able to run the motion
control layer, but first, you'd have to do a custom install and then use
the headless version of
EMC2 where the GUI runs on another computer. And, still, you might not
be able to make it run with
only 64 MB. I do have a system running with 128 MB, but I needed to put
in more just for the install.

166 MHz and 64 MB is REALLY quite old. I have recently retired my 600
MHz Pentium machine
as I got some more castoffs from work.

Jon