Re: Clarification on a few things

[Ray <rehenry-at-up.net>]

David

Welcome.  My comments are mixed in.

On Tue, 27 Feb 2001, David wrote:
> 
> Hello EMC users,
> I intend installing EMC onto my computer and I wanted to clarify a few
> things before I get started. I have a computer which is a pentium 100 with
> two hard drives (not sure what sizes) and 40 Mb of ram, with three
> partitions. I run Windows 95 in one partition, in another I have Red Hat
> Linux 5.2 (2.2.14) installed and soon Real Time Linux 2.2 will be
> installed as well, 

My thought here is that the Red Hat 5.2's that I've seen use the 2.0.36 or
2.0.38 kernel.  For that you would need the rtlinux09J with the floating
point modification by Fred Proctor.  Tim maintains files for this real time
at 

http://206.19.206.56/installemc.htm

>in the third partition I have had someone starting to
> install Red Hat Linux 6.2 but we had some problems with that which I will
> worry about at a later stage, at this point getting EMC up and running
> (which I have never installed before)with Red Hat 5.2 is the most important
> task. I intend using EMC on both a lathe and a 4 axis milling machine (by
> making the servo motor mounts interchangable with both machines) and I
> expect to be using a Servo to Go card. Now for the questions.....
> 1 EMC 0.9-25.i386-rt12.2.tgz is the latest and prefered version of EMC and
> what I should be installing, correct?

I'd use the latest release, for the kernel that you have, from sourceforge.

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=6744&release_id=20946

The file names are year, month, day, platform, realtime system, type of
compression.  So then you should read (1.1-17i386-r09J.tgz) as year 2001,
month January, day 17, platform i386, (this platform works for up to pentium
class machines) real time platform r09J (for the RH5.2 systems), and a tar
file.  Tar is a unix way of compressing files much like zip for dos users.

1.1-17src.tgz would be a source file.  These you would need to compile on
your own machine.  There are several files related to installing and
compiling on the linuxcnc.org/handbook

The files with the .aa .ab .ac are floppy sized releases.  All would be
required for a complete tar file.  You can read about combining these at 

www.linuxcnc.org/handbook/part1/emc/download.html

The .rpm files are Red Hat Package manager compatable install files.

For all of these except src, you need to be certain that you have the same
real time linux as the file name suggests.  They will NOT work on file
systems and with kernels that they were not compiled for.

> 2 I've heard a bit about TCL/TK but I'm not sure exacty what it is and
> whether it's part of the EMC main files, any info would help.
> 3 bkplot1.tgz, tkbackplot.tcl & allnew3dbackplot are presumably add on
> programs? Are they independent of each other? Should I install all of them?

Tcl/Tk is a programming language developed at Berkley and SUN and currently
maintained by www.Scriptics.com.  It is intended to be an application
connector language.  The EMC uses it for a GUI and for an auxiliary I/O
shell.  

There is a backplotter with tkemc.  It's under the view menu. 
allnew3dbackplot is the future one and allows you to view the product of
full six axis work.

> 4 TKEMC-pc_2.gz  TK EMC front end apparently, I have no idea what a front
> end is, what do I do with this file, should I be using 4AXTKEMC instead or
> as well to get 4 axies working?

The distribution files from sourceforge are complete in themselves.  The
dropbox files are stuff that we developers tend to offer for the courageous
to try at their own risk.  Dan placed these files there for folk who want
to follow his four axis router interface project.

> 5 EMC-0.9-25.src.tgz This file is source code and not required to get EMC
> running, correct? And something I need not be downloading as I have no
> programming knowledge at all, yes?
> 6 emccannon.cc I had a browse over this file but it didn't make a great deal 
> of sense to me, is it important? 
> 7 singleservo.tgz Do I need to download and install this file?

Ignore these until you've gotten a little deeper into the system.

> 8 Any other words of advice from experienced EMCers, any Linux info sites
> you can recomend, I have no Linux experience what so ever?

Well David.  You are at the point that I was about two years ago.  When I
started it took me a couple of weeks to get a running system.  Some more
recent developments make it easier.  

1. There is a ZipEmc CD running around that installs in a MS windows
partition and is nearly brain dead.  

2. Paul Corner is developing and will soon release a brain dead install
based on a lot of his work.  I intend to use this one as a baseline, if the
postman ever gets it here. (Our postman is a good cross country snow skier
but it is a long ways from town.)  But there is no substitute for finding
your own way into Linux  so that you have some knowledge of how it works
and how to restore it when it quits.  Linux is more stable that even the
latest MS2K but it is possible to break.  Much more so with the rt patches.

There are a number of good Linux books that I'd recommend.  The Linux in a
Nutshell from O'Riley is a good reference.  Some of the newer Linux
releases have books and good interfaces to the manual, info, and howto
pages that ship with them.

And your greatest resource are the folk that inhabit this list.  Don't be
shy asking for help.  Many of us celebrate a little when another user "gets
it up" <grin> and running.

Ray