Re: Floppy-EMC? and some other questions

["Steve Carlisle" <quatsein-at-island.net>]

After using Linux/EMC for a while it becomes a lot more easy for
guys to start fiddleing and hacking. If you want to attract new users
you better have a slick GUI, and an easy install procedure. We know
where EMC is lacking. Dedicate a cheap high performance all in one
motherboard to machine control, and use a PALM or similar device
for the GUI and hand held control, running MicroWindows.

Steve

----------
> From: Dan Falck <dfalck-at-sprynet.com>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <emc-at-nist.gov>
> Subject: Re: Floppy-EMC? and some other  questions
> Date: Monday, September 04, 2000 1:00 PM
> 
> 
> Brian,
> 
> This sounds like a good idea to me.  The GUI stuff is nice, but not
totally
> needed.  With the controls off the keyboard, it makes it like a lot of
CNC
> controls on larger machines.  Without the GUI, could you get more
> performance out of older systems?
> How about a minimal install that interfaces with another computer via a
> network?  Kind of like Fred's idea of the Win CE device (or any other
device
> for that matter) on the front end and the dedicated motion control PC in
the
> backround.
> 
> Dan
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: bfp <bfp-at-earthlink.net>
> To: Multiple recipients of list <emc-at-nist.gov>
> Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 12:45 PM
> Subject: Floppy-EMC? and some other questions
> 
> 
> >
> > I've been doing some fiddling with the EMC-bin distro and it looks like
> > it can be shrunk down to fit on the root floppy of a two disk floppy
set
> > (boot and root disks)
> > with the boot disk having the real time kernel and modules
> > and the root disk having a compressed ram disk image of the filesystem
> > with EMC and not much else ,may need a super-formated disk (~1.7 meg)
> > the root floppy would have to be configured for the specific machine it
> > would run on for example a stepper based machine would only have one
> > of the stepper-mot variations no simulation ,no test utilitys and only
the
> > old keystick text interface (for now)
> >
> > by using two floppy drives and editing the init scripts to boot into
> > single user mode ( runlevel 1,root access ,no login prompt), mount
> > and load the second disk and start EMC you could get by without having
> > a hard drive at all and be running the control straight from power up
> > (of course it would take a while to boot from floppys)
> >
> > I havent gotten to far into building a system like this but it has
brought
> > up a few questions
> >
> > Q) is anyone working on a better text interface than keystick and if so
> >      how can curses be made to display large fonts in a sub-window for
> >      the axis coordinate display? I've looked thru the documentation
and
> >      only found a few refrences to double wide fonts in terminfo but no
> >      examples of how to display them with ncurses
> >
> > Q) is anyone else working on a machine control pannel/pendant?
> >      I would like to move many of the basic controls off the screen and
> > keyboard
> >      I have most of the hardware (pulse hand weel,rotary
switches,toggle
> >      switches and buttons) and some ideas of how it could be tied in to
> >      the PC but havent gotten into the software side of it much
> >
> > Q) is there any real intrest in a floppy-EMC type system? or would this
be
> >      a dead end project?I know that a lot of work is going into the GUI
> > interfaces
> >      and a text interface seems like a step backwards but it does have
> many
> >      advantages as far as size and ease of setup on the computer(no X
> > config)
> >
> > there are also several Linux mini distros with X that can fit on and be
> > booted
> > from an IDE or SCSI Zip drive or an LS120 drive ,with the binary EMC
> distro
> > most of the developement libs/tools can be left out of the system to
> greatly
> > reduce the system size (down to a reasonable downloadable size ,say
~20MB
> or
> > less)
> > these could keep the GUIs but may be harder to set up on some systems
> > so
> > Q) are enough people using the super size floptical drives to make this
a
> > better
> >      project to start on than a standard floppy based system?
> >
> > I know that milti Gig hard drives can be found for about the same price
as
> a
> > floptical drive and one disk ,I'm just seeing how small I can make a
> useable
> > EMC
> > only system squish down to
> >
> > Brian
> >
> >
> >
>