PC hardware to run LinxCNC

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the links and advice. I've just spent some time looking around the MiniBox site - I hadn't come across them until your post. I had found a Siverstone SFX 450W psu over the weekend, but the Picos look really interesting, especially their exceedingly small footprints (other than that they appear to use a wall-wart), and ultra-lower power use, of course.

I have in fact been trawling the rsaustralia web a lot over the last week - lots of useful stuff there. I've acquired quite a number of milling cutters amongst other things from them in the past; more stock and better quality than Jaycar - and more expensive . You do get what you pay for. Thanks for the board link, although the D525 has already been paid for and should be here by the end of the week. It looks as though the Pico psu should work OK with that, too, and I noticed that MiniBox sell pata-4 pin leads as well.

Cheers,
Alex.

andypugh wrote:

AlexN wrote:

Finding the Atom board is a bit tricky here too as production appears to have been halted ("due to lack of demand"

In the US, Logic Supply, NewEgg and Directron all show the Intel D525MW boxed motherboard
in stock. I have not found any reference to it going out of production.

The D510MO has gone out of production, it was superseded by the D525 chip set.

Jon

My apologies: i got my wires crossed reading the Wikipedia artcle on the Intel Atom cpu regarding Intel's proposed collaboration with TMSC for chip production: that was "put on hold due to lack of demand in 2010".

That and the "no longer available" descriptions on a number of Oz web sites led me to leap instantly to the wrong conclusion - a bad habit of mine.

Let me know how the D525 goes.
How much did you spend for all your components?

gera229 wrote:

Let me know how the D525 goes.
How much did you spend for all your components?

Hi gera229,

Do you mean the PC parts or the control box/ steepers, or the whole box and dice including the mill. Actually, the whole box and dice doesn't include the box yet . I'm still scratching my head over that one, but I like Mr Pugh's idea, per the link in your thread.

I paid AU$90 for the D525, plus another $19 for freight. I think that the latter was a bit cheeky, since i ordered the thig a week ago and still haven't got it - although they supposedly had two of the boards in stock here in Sydney when I ordered mine. I have an uneasy feeling about this...

As to the cost of all the other bits and pieces, it was about 5 years ago(!), so I'd have to find the old receipts. I couldn't even put an estimate on it at the moment. What i do remember, however, is that I got the four good-quality steppers for US$20 each, an amazing bargain since their list price is currently $US99/motor! My special bargain price could have been because I bought the mill and other stuff from the same chap.

Hope that makes some sort of sense.

Cheers,
Alex

arch dude wrote:

SSD versus PXE boot with NFS is really a question of money vs. time. SSE is easy, but the drive costs about the same as the motherboard. PXE/NFS is more work to set up, but costs nothing if you have the server already. performance for this task is not an issue: either will just work.

In contrast to the machine controller (which must meet LinuxCNC's requirements) you can use any random computer to run as a Linux server. I personally think a gig-e interface is highly desireable, and you clearly need enough disk to support whatever services you intend it to provide.

I must confess to only learning of PXE's existence with your post, which for some odd reason I only just found . I have a bit of digging ahead of me to find out how to do it - whether the ethernet cards in my current machines (G5 PowerMac tower, 2010 (Intel) iMac w/Lion) support pxe is yet another bucket o' snakes. Still, I like learning new things .

As to disk size, i'm currently leaning towards either a 32 or 64 GB ssd, as I will possibly install XP/Mach3 on it "for fun."

Alex.

To use PXE, the boot client (the Atom in our example) must have a PXE client in the BIOS. The Server does not need anything special in the BIOS, since the boot server code runs as a server process initated from the kernel, not the BIOS. In neither case do you need anything special in the ethernet cards. In older computers that do not have PXE in the motherboard BIOS, there may be a PXE client in the portion of the BIOS that resides on an Ethernet card: I don't know. This is not relevant for the Atom motherboards, where PXE is in the BIOS. If you want your server machine to enter "sleep mode" to save energy, I suppose you would need an ethernet card (or port) on the server with "wake on LAN," capability and a BIOS on the server to match: again, I would not know: my home servers are always on, not sleeping.

XP and Mach3 are intrinsically evil . Linux is the One TRUE OS!! However, the use of PXE does not preclude the use of XP. I am not a Windows person, but remote boot is possible for Windows. Even if there were no native way to do it, you could PXE boot Linux and run XP in a VM (KVM for choice.) However, if your current passion is CNC, you will probably have more fun learning EMC and machining rather than the exotica of diskless operation on heterogeneous operating systems.

One idea that I had was to use a small 10" or 12" touchscreen, assuming that 1. the specs are correct and the thing would work with Ubuntu/LinuxCNC (I can see no reason why it wouldn't, unless there might be a motherboard incompatibility) and 2. the screen would survive my grubby (oily) paws.

I did a bit of searching this morning and found that OS X doesn't do PXE as such, but does use bootpd. I'll attempt cross that particular bridge if I come to it, however. At the moment the power supply for the drives (I thInk I may have the wrong transformer) and finding a suitable case are taking up most of the time. RS Australia has a lot of cases that are too small or too expensive. Andy Pugh's extrusion frame looks to be a possible solution.

andypugh wrote:

AlexN wrote:

Andy Pugh's extrusion frame looks to be a possible solution.

Here is another one (I needed a 20" rack. Not a 19"…) for a 1U server PC.
picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/QiYY_5vRG2...pFm0?feat=directlink
20x20 extrusion and MDF painted black.
(It's easy to expand and contract as needed too)

Hi Andy,

I've been quiet but busy . Many thanks for the link to that photo: I did some digging and came up with a supplier in Oz, viz, Modular Components and Automation . They have a very juicy array of stuff, and I spent some time working through their catalogue of items before sending them an email regarding costs. I'm currently sifting through the price list and advice prior to asking them some more questions. They are more than happy to supply me with the small amount of extrusion required for my setup (which will house a 19" steel rack case - this seems to be the best option after an exhausting search), and will even cut to prescribed length - for a small cost per cut. I'd cut the stuff myself but my metal circular saw's blade is stuffed and the cost of a new blade is (for this job) less than a third of the cost of a new blade. Plus the freight is probably lower for a shorter package.

After an almos- two-week wait for something that was supposedly in stock (probably in stock in the warehouse in HK), the D525 board was picked up by the courier this arvo, so hopefully it will turn up tomorrow. As tomorrow happens to be Friday, I won't hold my breath as couriers in Sydney on Friday are - in my experience - almost totally unreliable on account of the insane Friday traffic congestion here in Sydney. As I don't have anything else to add onto the board or power it up with at the moment - I've been waiting for the board to actually show before doing that - that's probably a moot point anyway. Maybe Monday...