breakout board usb or parallel

[John S]

The parallel port driver inside Mach3 works and works well for all general work.
Where it falls over is in threading on lathes, it works for some but not others.
The new drive for Mach 4 called Darwin has just been started by Art who still owns the rights to the driver, not Brian.

I'm working with Art on a test version just for threading. Decisions will be made about backwards comparability later, by whom I don't know, presumably Brian.

The problem with the add ons like K Flop and Smooth Stepper is increased cost and complexity.
I have looked at USB devices and do not like them as you are tied to the one developer who has written in stone how it works and looks, at least with Mach you can customise to your requirements.

[Robin Hewitt]

I have looked at USB devices and do not like them as you are tied to the one developer who has written in stone how it works and looks

That's why I write my own. Nothing quite like having well commented source code when things go wrong

This is fresh in my mind because my current system is limiting me and about to get rewritten. I want the industry standard, up to date processor. Has to be ARM 32 which is cheap as chips, goes just as fast as you like, loads of goodies and oodles of I/O pins. Also tempted to go Ethernet like the big boys.

These new smilies are crap :frown-new:

[John S]

That's why I write my own. Nothing quite like having well commented source code when things go wrong

So again you are tied to the one developer ?

[Robin Hewitt]

So again you are tied to the one developer ?

Absolutely, but when things go wrong I don't just send a hopeful email and join the queue

[Nugget]

bit late to the thread. interesting about mach3 and the system timer enabling real time control. I wondered how that worked since desktop OS'es are not supposed to be real time. is this an issue with Linux CNC (emc2)? in fact I thought it made sense that an external controller did the well controlling since that was the only thing it had to do. I was wondering if you had any experience with the Smoothie project. it runs on a low cost ARM board and contains its own g-code interpreter.

[z3t4]

The parallel port driver inside Mach3 works and works well for all general work.

Any suggestions about which parallel cards work well (eg an ebay linky)? Tomorrow a KX3 is going to follow me home and I want to make it feel welcome .