Will or how do I make this work??

I have purchased a CNC Router built about 15+ years ago.
The 286 and it's software had to go.

I want to use an HP with a AMD Athlon, w/processor speed of 2.20 GHZ.
It's running integrated graphics with 64MB shared video memory.

The jitter is a little high given the shared graphics, (I think).

What is a good option here? (Or is there an option here).

I also need to replace the LPT ports because the boards from the old PC won't work with the newer PC.
The machine is using Anaheim Automation's DC stepper driver and motors.

Anaheim Auto suggested plan old LPT ports, so I have three of those en-route, I'm wondering if LPT boards from say Mesa would preform better and cut down on jitter.

Please let me know if I should make changes, and if so, how to go forward.

Thanks to all, Allen

What Anaheim drives do you have?

Some of them use a little bit odd parallel port pin-out. (But I think these were only made for a certain machine manufacturer.)

They are probably half stepping unipolar drives and probably won't see a huge improvement going from software to hardware stepping.

I want to use an HP with a AMD Athlon, w/processor speed of 2.20 GHZ.
.........The jitter is a little high

There are a huge variety of processors under the Athlon badge, some dual core some not.

If you have a single core try it with 8.04, if a dual core try it with isolcpus and 10.04

See
www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/forum...-the-latency-problem
www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/forum...me-latency-solutions

for that and more

regards

Todd, sorry I should have included that info.
Anaheim Automation Model #DPF 65003.
It's old, they have no information on it via the web.

Arceye, looks like I have some reading to do, thanks for your direction.
The integrated video isn't a problem?

That drive is functonally equivalent to its replacement the DPF72003
www.anaheimautomation.com/manuals/steppe...%20Users%20Guide.pdf

That is a unipolar, half stepping drive. (I have several of the 4 axis version laying around here). They should work fine with just an ordinary parallel port, provided the breakout board(s) you are currently using aren't to weird.

You will want to pull the cover off the drive and check the connections on the driver boards. They do sometimes burn up, but other wise seem pretty durable.

I have not gotten around to actually converting any of our machines that are still using Anaheim Automation step drives to LinuxCNC, other than bench testing to see that it would work. The machine I converted that did have an AA drive I converted to servos in the process. I might eventually get around to doing 1 or 2 machines with Anaheim Automation drives though.

Arceye, looks like I have some reading to do, thanks for your direction.
The integrated video isn't a problem?

It could be, but some are unproblematic.
Need to get the basics right first regards kernel, then things like trying different drivers, a video card etc.

regards

Thank you again to both of you.

I'm just curious, would you lose any functionality using 8.4 rather than 10.4?
Is there any difference between the two were Linuxcnc is concerned?

I decided to go with 8.04, the latency so far is much improved.
I did get this error message while updating though.

W: Failed to fetch security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/b/b...-2ubuntu0.1_i386.deb
404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.200 80]

Is this a concern?
What should I do if it is?

Basically, this means the latest version of some dns utilities couldn't be installed because the update process couldn't reach a file server. In other words, it's not you, it's "them".

I wouldn't worry about it. The situation should resolve itself over time once the file server becomes reachable and your update manager runs again.

Regards,
Kent