Folks: It is time to update my CNC controller. I'm now using a 1GHz Pentium III computer, with 4Mb memory, running EMC2 2.0.3. It works fine but would like to access CAD (Varicad) and CAM (Sheetcam) software in the shop. This old computer isn't up to running those. I have a Lenovo desktop I've planned (for a couple of years) to move to the shop, however after loading LinuxCNC the latency (300,000) was terrible. After some fiddling and tuning I gave up on the Lenovo.
So, I read the Intel D525MW miniITX board works well with LinuxCNC. Too old to be found through NewEgg, etc. but I found one through Amazon. It shipped from Mega Micro Devices but I don't see it on their site. I've mounted it in a miniITX case with one 2Gb memory stick, 500Gb hard drive and CD Drive. I put a PCI single parallel card in but don't currently plan to use this second port. I loaded LinuxCNC 2.5.2 without a problem. Latency tests show "Jitter" around 16.3 uS (16,300 nS) out of the box. After turning off hyper-threading this came down to around 10 uS, but I didn't run the test for very long. I used the "Stepper Configuration Wizard" to build the *.ini and *.hal files. All seemed to work. I then connected the D525MW up to my converted mill. It uses a PMDX-131 breakout board with three (XYZ) Gecko G202 drives. This circa 2007 controller works very well with the old Pentium computer. Well, the motion using the D525MW is very ragged and doesn't conform to the requested motion. I have Trav-A-Dial readouts on X and Y which show the ragged motion. It's a ragged motion all the time, not a burp once in a while. Asking for G1 X0.5 F10 gives a jerky motion of 0.1" or 0.2". Something is terribly wrong. I don't think this is a tuning problem and I've tried different BASE_PERIODS without any noticeable change. I pulled the second parallel port out with no change. I don't know what else to do. I compared the *.ini files from EMC2 2.0.3 and LinuxCNC 2.5.2 and don't see anything amiss. The pinout in the *.hal files seem the same. Also, there is action on X, Y and Z when jogged leading one to believe the pinout is OK. I spent a few minutes trying to configure it to use the PCI parallel card rather than the onboard parallel port. I found the card (lspci -v) but couldn't get it configured in LinuxCNC. The I/O ports are at 1000, 1010, 1018, 1020, 1028, & 1030 but I may have a format error when I enter these into the HAL file. I hope there's something simple amiss and someone can assist me in finding it. I can post the configuration files if asked, please let me know which ones and how best to include (inline, attached, etc). Any additional tests to run? Thank you in advance. PS. I seem to go though this every five years or so when I get the bug to update my controller. Please bear with me. -- Hugh Currin Klamath Falls, OR USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
