Linux CNC: Anybody using Mesa control boards?

[Harry The Big Dog]

What axis motors do you have on your BP? Are they BP steppers, DC servo, AC servo? With the Anilam controller, I'm guessing they might be DC servo.

If you don't have the manuals for the Mesa cards, here are links to the manuals

http://www.mesanet.com/pdf/parallel/6i25man.pdf


http://www.mesanet.com/pdf/parallel/7i76man.pdf

Thanks for getting back to me. THe servos are the SEM Type MT 30M4-59 DC servos that I was told Anilam used on all the small machine conversions.

 

[Harry The Big Dog]

The only thing I can add is that the 7i76 is a simple step/direction output. If you can identify the right inputs for your drivers, it should be relatively easy to connect (there are only 2 wires per axis, step and direction).

Thanks you. I have done so much reading last few days about this. I am still drowning in the knowledge. I still need to buy a Mini ITX set up but I am not sure which one would be best for this application.

 

[dracozny]

Thanks you. I have done so much reading last few days about this. I am still drowning in the knowledge. I still need to buy a Mini ITX set up but I am not sure which one would be best for this application.

Any of the Atom ITX boards will be plenty fast enough for Linuxcnc. you can go with a faster processor or even a dual core but when you start going into larger desktop models it gets to be a bit of overhead within the firmware alone. if you search the PC Computers Board over at the Linuxcnc Forum you will find a number off possibilities, I posted a build over there. you can also search some of the public shopping lists for CNC and find a few builds others have made, including the one I built.

 

[arlo]

Any of the Atom ITX boards will be plenty fast enough for Linuxcnc. you can go with a faster processor or even a dual core but when you start going into larger desktop models it gets to be a bit of overhead within the firmware alone. if you search the PC Computers Board over at the Linuxcnc Forum you will find a number off possibilities, I posted a build over there. you can also search some of the public shopping lists for CNC and find a few builds others have made, including the one I built.

I built a miniITX Atom based system using a parallel port interface. There are a limited number of motherboards that provide a parallel port. I bought an inexpensive ASRock motherboard that performs well with the one BIG limitation being that the board's USB ports are not compatible with the LinuxCNC drivers. ASRock advised me that this is a Linux problem and not an ASRock problem. And that was that.

Not having USB capability means I have to use a wired LAN connection, rather than wireless and that I can't use thumbdrives to transport files from computer to computer. So I've got to e-mail my programs back and forth. These aren't big problems but having USB capability would be nice.

Based on this experience, ASRock should not expect to see any more of my business.

 

[DMS]

Seems odd that a current chipset lacks Linux support; fifteen years ago I would not have been surprised, but these days everything I have tried works off the shelf. They are right of course, they don't make the chips, or write the drivers, but I have to wonder at their selection process.

Regarding Hary's setup, as long as the board has a PCI or PCIe port, he should not have any issues with the mesa boards, but not having usb support would be a real PITA. Might be worth checking on whether anyone has run Linux on whatever board you choose before you pull the trigger.

 

[arlo]

Seems odd that a current chipset lacks Linux support; fifteen years ago I would not have been surprised, but these days everything I have tried works off the shelf. They are right of course, they don't make the chips, or write the drivers, but I have to wonder at their selection process.

Regarding Hary's setup, as long as the board has a PCI or PCIe port, he should not have any issues with the mesa boards, but not having usb support would be a real PITA. Might be worth checking on whether anyone has run Linux on whatever board you choose before you pull the trigger.

I think it's likely that the most recent versions of Linux have been updated to handle USB on the ASRock motherboards. Unfortunately, LinuxCNC is not based on the latest version of Ubuntu. I quit trying to update when I kept breaking LinuxCNC. I agree that it's worth checking to see if a potential motherboard choice is compatible but I think the check should be LinuxCNC and not just to Linux.

 

[dracozny]

I built a miniITX Atom based system using a parallel port interface. There are a limited number of motherboards that provide a parallel port. I bought an inexpensive ASRock motherboard that performs well with the one BIG limitation being that the board's USB ports are not compatible with the LinuxCNC drivers. ASRock advised me that this is a Linux problem and not an ASRock problem. And that was that.

Not having USB capability means I have to use a wired LAN connection, rather than wireless and that I can't use thumbdrives to transport files from computer to computer. So I've got to e-mail my programs back and forth. These aren't big problems but having USB capability would be nice.

Based on this experience, ASRock should not expect to see any more of my business.

I bought one without, but I had no need since I wanted to use the 6i25-7i77 combo. so 1 pci Express 1x slot worked fine. ASrock is also the low end provider of ASUS products FYI and yea they are substandard. Gigabit boards are rock solid. never had an issue with one.

 

[tmarks11]

Not having USB capability means I have to use a wired LAN connection, rather than wireless and that I can't use thumbdrives to transport files from computer to computer.

You could use a small "travel" router like this to act as a wifi client, plugged into your linux machine's ethernet port:

http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-WR710N-Wireless-Repeater-Charging/dp/B00FRMAOIO

This has a USB port that you can plug a thumb drive into, and share it across the network as a network drive. You could copy your code files directly to it from your desktop, and than from it to your linux machine.

I haven't tried this on a linux computer, but it works okay on winXP and win7 machines.