Re: Lathe & Mill

[Jon Elson <elson-at-pico-systems.com>]

Richard wrote:

>If I wanted to use EMC for both Lathe and Mill would it be
>possible to :
>
>1) Run both at once by concurrent instances of EMC ?
>
Given enough CPU power, and enough I/O resources, yes, it should be 
possible.
You would, however, have to rename the real-time process for one of them, so
the two don't get confused.  I'm not sure how the internal symbols of 
the real-time
process get resolved.  It might be necessary to rename all the 
procedures in the
real-time module, as well, because I think these all become kernel 
symbols when the
module is installed.  You'd also have to set up differently named 
communication
buffers between the RT and Linux sections.  So, I think there might be some
significant problems with running two copies of EMC at the same time. 
 If the
SAME instance of the real-time module, with different parameters from a
different .ini configuration file would work, then this might be a lot 
easier.

>2) Launch EMC correctly cofigured for either Lathe or Mill by
>parameter passing or script of some sort?
>  
>
Yes, this is easy!  I often do this when testing, running different 
setups on the same
computer.  it only takes seconds to switch.

>Actually, on the subject of Lathes, does EMC actually support
>them?. I'm sure I've seen mention of it but can't see any
>support for a spindle encoder or threading.
>  
>
Yes, this is the problem area.  People are getting serious about fixing 
this deficiency,
and I hope we will have this working within a few months.

>BTW, I know nothing about Linux I'm afraid other than a little
>playing with it under an emulator, but I am an
>engineer/programmer by trade.
>
>  
>
Well, I knew very little about it a few years ago, but have gotten up to 
speed, as my
frustration with MicroSoft has grown from mild to major.  I've done 
stuff for free
that would have cost me thousands of $ of commercial software under Windows.
I have a web server, ftp, IP masquerade for my other home systems 
(kids), firewalls,
etc. running on a Linux system.  All this software came WITH the Linux 
CD, and
I figured out how to configure it all in a couple of evenings.  If you 
DID get such
software from MS, you'd need to take 3 $1000+ courses just to know how 
to set it
up, because all the documentation is propritary.

Jon