Re: EMC compatable computers

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

Hi Bob

I've had very good operation using the Via/Cyrix socket 370 chips.  This 
one that I'm typing on is a FIC motherboard with an Via 800 and it does a 
rather good job with the BDI-TNG.  It's got one ISA.  The onboard Trydent 
CyberBlade display driver is a big yawn, but it is adequate for EMC and 
for most of the "office" stuff I need to do.

I'm told that there is a Via 1.1 or 1.2 CPU in the works with the 370 
pinprint.

If the desire to get processor speed up has anything to do with display, 
Nvidia now supports both Linux and FreeBSD direct from the company web 
site.  I'm told that they do it for all their cards.  Their driver 
download page has a bunch of helpful start here type stuff.

Some additional thoughts on this in random order.  

My approach has always been to get the lowest cost board on special and 
try it.  If it works, great.  If not load a legal copy of that other OS 
and sell the setup cheap.  I really haven't found a board that didn't 
work for the most part.  Sometimes a peripheral won't be recognized and 
you'll have to search out a solution if you need that device.  

The need for an ISA slot could be avoided if you used a PCI encoder and 
D/A card like the Vigilant.  Once you find the pci address you can use 
that in the ini file -- as long as you don't change the hardware.  Or if 
you keep changing the nature of your hardware, you could develop an 
automatic plug-and-play like routine for this using grep on the result of 
a cat /proc/pci command each time you start up the EMC.

Industrial motherboards, SBC's and backplanes will have the isa slots for 
a long time yet.  You'll spend more money but you'll have a setup 
that will be reproducible and repairable for years.  These kinds of 
systems are end user serviceable as well in the event that you are not 
the end user.   I saw a recent quote on an SBC with 800 via that included 
a passive six slot backplane, card carrier, and stuff like 128 Meg 
disk-on-chip for less than $600.

If you are running a servo machine, you don't really need much PC power.  
And most of what is there is available for gui and such.  

You could start tkemc or tkemcex under x-windows without the desktop 
manager and save a bit more overhead.  I've done this and it does produce 
somewhat faster response.

Like CW says, there are a lot of used computers out there.  I was given a 
166 gateway with at least six ISA slots.  I overclocked it to 200MHz and 
loaded the BDI 2.18.  Works great with my Grizzly minimill at 36 ipm 
using either steppermod or freqmod.   The winmodem doesn't work and it 
says that it knows that there is a network device but can't figure out 
what it is! 

Ray



On Friday 10 January 2003 08:41 am, Bob Simon wrote:
> Has anyone here done an EMC compatibility study of the various
> motherboard/processor combinations available? I need something with a
> 700 mhz or better processor and an ISA slot.
>
> I'm discovering that each day there are fewer and fewer momboards
> available with the ISA slot needed to run EMC with a STG board. Most
> are "socket A" AMD boards, although I do see a few socket 370 Intel
> boards with an ISA slot.
>
>  From what I read on the web, LINUX seems to function rather well on an
> AMD machine. Unfortunately, most of the "road tests" are momboards
> without an ISA slot.
>
> I have a list of current AMD motherboards with ISA slots. If any of you
> are using one of these, please jump in and tell me what you know.
>
> BIOSTAR M7VKQ
> EPOX 8KTA
> ABIT KT7A
> Chaintech 7AIA
> ASUS K7M
> Soyo K7VTA
> Shuttle MK20
>
>
> Any help is appreciated.
>
> -Bob