Re: Firewire / follow up for JK

[jmkasunich-at-ra.rockwell.com]

Dave Volosky wrote:


> There are several parallel, loosely related, analogies to
> be had is this matter. In my opinion, the best example is
> amateur radio. It has a large segment of participants that
> would rather build equipment - for ZERO cost to them - than
> actually communicate with others.

Interesting that you would choose that analogy.  I had a ham
license many years ago, until I realized that I was one of
those folks who just wanted to build, not use, the radios.

Fortunately, CNC is a field where I want to both build and
use the equipment.  I have been doing hobby machining
on and off for about 20 years, and for the last 4 years it
has been pretty seriously on.  I've got a nice shop built
up, all manual right now.

> A very small fraction of these same people were ( and are )
> responsible for driving technology forward.

Yes - I'd like to make contributions, but sometimes I think
the days when I could "hack" till 2am are long gone.  :(
I've got to choose my projects based on what I will enjoy
and can complete in a reasonable time, not on what will
advance the state of the art.

> Another characteristic of some is that they are ' tight,
> very tight ' with their money.

Yep!

> I feel that the safe approach is to push forward and
> ' hack ' the same hardware solutions that the commercial
> interests are favoring. There is no cost effective, or
> any, motivation to compete with established producers
> along a parallel development path.

Commercial systems seem to be moving to digital drives
and high speed communication between drive and PC.  They
are completely eliminating step and direction.  Closed
systems, not very "hacker-friendly", unless you spend
lots of time to learn the protocols.  Certainly beyond
my ability/motivation/time.  I'll stick with step and dir.

> I am still patiently waiting for the rigid tapping and
> threading limitations to be eliminated in EMC.

Me too - since my Shoptask is a mill/lathe combo, threading
is very important to me.  It seems that the majority of
people are CNC'ing mills, not lathes.

> If I felt that I could make a meaningful contribution,
> I would already be working on the changes.

Same here.  I'm sure I could do threading on my machine.
Doing the same in a portable way that was worthy of fitting
into the EMC codebase is a whole 'nother story, and probably
beyond my ability.  I'm at heart a hardware guy, not a
programmer.

> I do appreciate what you and others here are doing to
> help me achieve a goal that would, otherwise, remain
> out of reach.

So far all I've done is talk.  Don't mistake me for one of
the guys who has actually contributed to EMC.

John