Re: parallel port finally obsolete?

I think there is a different delineation than what most of offered.

you can get plug and play. A HASS mini-mill or lathe.
Roland makes table top units, T-Tech makes circuit board etchers, etc

but, the hobby market is based on assembling bits and pieces in order to save costs in exchange for time.

many of us think a BOB, power supply, drivers and motors are just a few nights work to assemble so see that as an easy part (albeit costly) part of the project.

also, many of us find that the horrible timing pulses from windoz units are actually more than acceptable for the work we do.

There really has not been a need for a plug and play package.

a simple desktop dremel unit with assembled pipe has entirely different requirements than does a chinese micro-mill or a 4x8 table top router or even a plasma table.

There are people who offer the entire electronics package as plug and play, but these are guys who know how simple it is to assemble a power supply and drivers that match a motor or machine.
And, you still fall back on the software of your choosing.

I stepped out of the main-stream for a while. once I had a few machines built for the work I was doing, I was more into production than making a CNC machine. the market is a little wider, the knowledge is WAY easier to get. but there has been little advancement.

I bet my great grandfather would be able to drive my car with only a handful of instructions.

Dave

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "scyvt" <scy@...> wrote:
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> --- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "Tom" <thom@> wrote:
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> > There are lots of solutions. (unlike 8 years ago) In some ways it just confuses the market.
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> Well, that may be my answer right there. Perhaps I was caught up in the excitement a few years ago when Marriss was developing what looked to be a be-all, end-all black box, that in its simplest form promised to be plug-and-play. Unfortunately, that particular approach proved to be unachievable. However, it for a while held out the prospect of being a market dominator like Geckodrives, eliminating the head-spinning difficulty of sorting out the pros & cons of all the other competing hardware & software.
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> Being a Mac person (sissy?), I have been holding out for a Mac-like (not necessarily Mac-based, although that would be nice) integrated hardware/software solution that was a stand-out choice. Perhaps FlashCut comes closest, but is not in my budget range.
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> Those of you who are up to your elbows in CNC may not recognize that Art's solution to the limitations of Windows looks to an outsider like a temporary kludge, surely to be superseded anytime now. EMC/Linux is great if you have the time and inclination to overcome the learning curve. DOS-based approaches look prehistoric.
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> On the hardware front, as Tom observed, the variety of offerings can present a dilemma, as much as opportunity. Is there somewhere a matrix (spreadsheet?) that organizes the field into some kind of discernible order? You might think that Digital Machinist mag would have undertaken such a project, but they may be wary of offending advertisers, or it maybe simply outside their capabilities.
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> Lacking the time or depth of knowledge to sort out all the options, as I referenced earlier, I have been waiting and hoping for the field to coalesce around a consensus approach. For better or worse, the opposite seems to have happened.
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> I could go on, but either you get my point now, or you just feel that I am stupid and hopeless. Probably Tom was closest to the mark in inferring that the problem for people like me is too many choices, no clear best approach, and no way to get a comprehensive grip on the pros & cons of the alternatives. All compounded with a lingering suspicion that surely a breakthru must surely be around just the corner.
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> Steve
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