Re: Platform- and misc. Questions

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

Hallo Till

I've found that the best place to get the latest sources is sourceforge. 
You can download them as an anonymous user by going to 

www.sourceforge.net.projects/emc

>From there click on the cvs menu and follow the instructions located on
that page.  If you have problems, "Paul D. Fincato" <fincato-at-infinet.com>
just recently went through this process and can describe it better than I
can.  I use the developer download.

After the download, copy the file named emc/scripts/generic/packupsrc into
the directory above emc.  Execute ./packupsrc and you will get a tar of the
entire emc and rcslib that is portable.  If you need floppy sized tar
files, you can execute

split -b 1400k "archive name"  "archive name".a
 
Now you should move the archive to the location you want for the EMC and
untar and ./install it.  The last time I tried this it worked well with
Linux-2.2.14 and rtlinux-2.2a.  After the install you should look through
the log files in the install directory to see if anything didn't work.

When you have a version that will compile as it is on sourceforge, you can
begin to make changes to the various sourcefiles and make files in emc/src
and below.  Compile often so that you know which changes cause problems.

We could get a copy of the BDI (Brain Dead Install) to you quickly if that
would help.  Or Max has a copy there a few kilometers from you.  I have not
tried to compile using the BDI so I can't comment on how easy that would
be.  It is Linux-2.2.18 and rtlinux-2.3 so it would get you near the
current releases of this software.

The new tkemc will show and control each defined axis.  It will allow you
to home each motor in joint mode and then run programs in world mode.  It
is a very nice addition to the software.  

Hope this helps.  

viele  gruesse  ray


On Wed, 16 May 2001, Till wrote:
> Hi group!
> a Student of mine is trying to set up EMC for a Hexapod that is run by Stepper
> Motors.
> We had quite some trouble finding a Version of RTlinux and RedHat and EMC that
> fit together and compile well.
> One Problem is that the sources on the NIST website are out of date. Maybe there
> should better be a link to the sources on sourceforge. They seem to be quite
> complete.
> Then we had some trouble compiling the whole stuff again after writing new
> kinematics files. These scripts and the makefiles are quite tricky and i do not
> fully understand them. So when I wanted to compile my kinematics functions, I
> always used to run the compile script right at the /usr/local - level. This took
> some time but worked well. I newer versions there is no compile script at this
> level. We took some from the /scripts directory but they didnt result in full
> /plat-stuff. What would you suggest?
> After we had successfully done that in a version of February 2000 for our
> Hexapod, we were able to reference the axes in Axis-Mode and run G0 Z20 in
> MDI-Mode. The Steppers moved as expexted. Then we wanted to tune the Step per mm
> -ratio and these changes to the ini-file caused the communication to fail. Is
> this a known effect? When the processor is overloaded with motion tasks does
> this cause problems with the communication?
> With G50 and G51 You can choose between inch and mm, i think. The default status
> is inch in emc. How can I change this default to mm?
> We had the effect that yemc sometimes worked and sometimes didnt is it unstable
> or are we causing this by something in our .ini?
> In some recent mails you talk of tkemc as a possible hexapod gui. Can we
> visualize 6 axes with some new version of tkemc? Where can i find it? Which
> redhat, which linux/real-time-linux/emc do i have to choose to make it work?
> Till