Re: RTLinux vs RTAI and EMC

[Chris Wagner <clwagner-at-eecs.wsu.edu>]

On  9 Jun, Ray Henry wrote:
> 
> 
> Fantastic Chris.  Would you be willing to write up your experience so I can 
> put it in the revised handbook?  We use LyX for this but any format will do.
> 

I'll be happy to write it up, when I do the real setup.  I learned a
bit about what it takes to get things running, but I think all of it has
been covered in other emc-list posts. I had to do various minor hacks to
get things to build, in hindsight they are all on the list.  Thus I'll
do a better job next time.  Unfortunatly I'm gonna be very busy on
other things for a while (my own poor scheduling, sigh).  I do need to
get emc going, so I need to decide on which setup (rtl vs rtai) I'll
standardize on.  Then I'll do a formal install/setup and pass on the
proceedure.

> Do you really need steppermod.  Freqmod will work nearly as well but not 
> quite as fast. 

I would consider it for now, but I suspect (as Tim and Erie have said)
that I'll want steppermod for the real thing. I plan on using Gecko's.
Is the issue with steppermod that it has not been ported to rtai? 

Does anyone have a working configuration for freqmod and open-loop
steppers that they would share?  I presume that I've still got config
problems with my (RTAI) freqmod test setups, they bomb out with:
...
emcsh.cc 5642: can't connect to emc.
...
I don't know if I've broken this rtai-based install.

I have a steppermod/minimill setup working with the RTL system.  I have
verified that it is twiddling the parallel port pins.

> 
> Ray
> 
> 
> On Sunday 09 June 2002 08:07, you wrote:
>> Greetings,
>>
>> I've managed to get a couple of test installations of EMC more-or-less
>> working:
>>
>> 1) RTL 2.3, Kernel 2.2.14, EMC 1.1-17 (RH6.2 base install)
>>
>> 2) RTAI 24.1.9, Kernel 2.4.18 EMC 2.1-16 (SuSe 8.0 base install)
>>
>> It would seem, both from my compile & run results and reading this list,
>> that the RTAI + EMC  does not make steppermod.o.  Is this a temporary
>> problem?  Can I expect to see steppermod with RTAI in the future? (or
>> is it hopeless?)
>>
>> In general I would prefer the RTAI+2.4.18 solution, the Kernel etc work
>> better with my hardware.  As of now however it looks like I need to stick
>> with the RTL to get steppermod.
>>
>> Please comment.

-- 
Chris Wagner
clwagner-at-I.think.you.should.cut.thiS.eecs.wsu.edu