PC Upgrade Options?

[Neale]

The motherboard in my original garage PC decided to throw in the towel and I bought a cheap AMD-based replacement which did not have integral PP. I bought with it a cheap PP PCI card which worked fine for a year or so with my BOB, so no electrical compatibility issues. Although I ran LinuxCNC on that hardware, I did try a demo copy of Mach3 which seemed to be happy with the PP card as well. Motherboard and PP card both came from Novatech. I have to admit that I am in the middle of moving to a Mach3/Ethernet/CSMIO. but only because of the CSMIO and nothing to do with hardware problems or reliability. Seem to be some good reports about the UC100/300 motion controllers, which might be another way around the PP problem but not sure about them with a lathe (I'm running a router with my system).

[Boyan Silyavski]

Its up to you. For me PC upgrade means moving to offline controller / after my latest troubles with Pokeys/ . Otherwise any old cheap pc does excellent job. A day ago i bought a cheap offline controller from China to give it a try. Next on my list is trying the more expensive ones.

From the beginning to me a mach3 was not a reliable solution. Change this, forget that sequence of starting PC, then this, then that and all messes up. Not to speak of that the Mach3 screens f%%k up almost 100% on electricity stop suddenly. And if you have forgotten to make at least 3 backups, then you are in trouble. I will happily pay 500-800euro for any reliable solution without Mach3 or PC. Even if chinese. For now i will try the cheap ones ~180 euro, but at the moment i am searching for manuals and who really makes the ~500euro ones

[Chaz]

Its up to you. For me PC upgrade means moving to offline controller / after my latest troubles with Pokeys/ . Otherwise any old cheap pc does excellent job. A day ago i bought a cheap offline controller from China to give it a try. Next on my list is trying the more expensive ones.

From the beginning to me a mach3 was not a reliable solution. Change this, forget that sequence of starting PC, then this, then that and all messes up. Not to speak of that the Mach3 screens f%%k up almost 100% on electricity stop suddenly. And if you have forgotten to make at least 3 backups, then you are in trouble. I will happily pay 500-800euro for any reliable solution without Mach3 or PC. Even if chinese. For now i will try the cheap ones ~180 euro, but at the moment i am searching for manuals and who really makes the ~500euro ones

Thanks. Ive seen these 'systems', please link some so that we can review. What 'standard' do they follow in terms of post processing etc?

Thanks

[A_Camera]

Its up to you. For me PC upgrade means moving to offline controller / after my latest troubles with Pokeys/ . Otherwise any old cheap pc does excellent job. A day ago i bought a cheap offline controller from China to give it a try. Next on my list is trying the more expensive ones.

From the beginning to me a mach3 was not a reliable solution. Change this, forget that sequence of starting PC, then this, then that and all messes up. Not to speak of that the Mach3 screens f%%k up almost 100% on electricity stop suddenly. And if you have forgotten to make at least 3 backups, then you are in trouble. I will happily pay 500-800euro for any reliable solution without Mach3 or PC. Even if chinese. For now i will try the cheap ones ~180 euro, but at the moment i am searching for manuals and who really makes the ~500euro ones

What specific "starting order" are you talking about? The only thing required before starting up Mach3 is to plug in the UC300 and to wait the few seconds it takes for the PC to recognize it. If that is not done Mach3 will report an error and will not find it once it is plugged in unless Mach3 is closed and restarted again.

I also don't understand what you mean by "Mach3 screens f%%k up almost 100% on electricity stop suddenly"? Do you mean sudden electricity power cut? That can be a problem for any software, not only Mach3. Of course, that is easily solved by an UPS. I have one connected to both the CNC and my PC. Another solution is to run Mach3 on a laptop which has batteries. Normally a sudden power loss will not be noticed in laptops because of the battery. On the other hand, a power loss to the CNC itself would cause problems anyway, so why is that a Mach3 issue for you? Like I said, I don't understand what you mean.

I have used Mach3 now for quite a while and while I am not entirely happy about it, I think it is a nice software and find it very reliable. I am not saying there is no better, but it works fine. Perhaps today I'd buy UCCNC instead, or maybe I will one day and run the two in parallel to see which one I like more, but for now, the UC300 and Mach3 are a good and reliable pair. Fact is, I have just recently discovered the Brains and decided to use RS485 and Modbus to control and monitor my VFD with, and that seems to work nicely in Mach3, now that I understand how. It is poorly documented, but that's another thing... Mach3 in general is well documented and there is a huge wealth of information on the Internet about it, even if Brains is not part of that.