Re: emc on microway alpha pc?

[Jon Elson <jmelson-at-artsci.wustl.edu>]

"Terry L. Ridder" wrote:

> hello;
>
> i already have linux-2.2.17 patch with rtlinux-2.2
> running on my microway 500mhz alpha. it appears to
> be stable. has anyone attempted to run emc on an
> alpha? are there any areas to be aware of?
>
> linux distribution is redhat-6.2 alpha, with changes
> made by me.

Right off the top of my head, I can't think of a reason
it shouldn't work, but there may well be one.
I may desire to use a machine instruction in the code
I use to drive my parallel port connected encoder counters
and DACs.  There is an x86 instruction that will read
(and another to write) a series of bytes to/from a
single I/O port.  This would speed up the transfer
of data from the encoder counter and to the DAC.
I will have to test this, and if the speed improvement
is not substantial, then keep to the portable C code.
If the way the EPP/ECP parallel port works the same
on that machine, then there shouldn't be much problem.

Will you be running servos or steppers?  If you will use
the Servo-to-Go card, their diagnostics, etc. are for
PCs under DOS, only.  That won't run, except possibly
under an emulator.

Jon