linuxcnc for 533mhz celeron?

I have a taig with xylotex driver board that I have always run with turbocnc, but have always wanted to install emc. I have a 533 mhz celeron with 256mb of ram. Is there a version of linuxcnc that will work for me? I tried to install the version that works with Ubuntu 6.06, but after pressing install ubuntu I get all kinds of I/O errors. Should I try the version that installs with Ubuntu 8.04 or is that a lost cause? I have an old version of emc with redhat on disk, can I get any help with that if its my only option? Just looking for advice. I would hate to get yet another pc when I have several old ones laying around that I would like to put to use for this.

I've now tried the ubuntu 8.04 version, a regular ubuntu 7.04 disk, knoppix, and redhat and all seem to have I/O errors. It mentions hdc and I think they are hard drive errors. The hard drive is good and the computer runs windows 2000 well (ntfs file system). I just repartitioned and I am formatting the drive now. Either something is going on there or something in the bios. I have been digging around in the bios and changed a couple of things to no avail. Ubuntu 7.04 was the only thing that would start up as a live cd, and then it wouldn't install (just did nothing when I hit install).

jaredts wrote:

I have a taig with xylotex driver board that I have always run with turbocnc, but have always wanted to install emc. I have a 533 mhz celeron with 256mb of ram. Is there a version of linuxcnc that will work for me? I tried to install the version that works with Ubuntu 6.06, but after pressing install ubuntu I get all kinds of I/O errors. Should I try the version that installs with Ubuntu 8.04 or is that a lost cause? I have an old version of emc with redhat on disk, can I get any help with that if its my only option? Just looking for advice. I would hate to get yet another pc when I have several old ones laying around that I would like to put to use for this.

If you plan on doing software stepping, this is close to a lost cause, even if it worked. The Taig has 20 TPI
leadscrews, so it needs the motors to spin pretty fast even to move the machine slowly. You don't mention
if your drives are microstepping or not, but that makes it even worse, as it needs higher step pulse
rates to get the same speed.

I/O errors does sound like there is something wrong with the hardware, but it could be having
problems reading the CD. Some older CD drives either get dust in the optics or the laser
fades. You might have to swap the CD drive to get it to install. 6.06 should install and function
on this old hardware, but it won't perform well, especially for software step pulse generation.

Jon

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I think it must be the cd drive after thinking about it and reading a bit. The drive has worked fine--I just installed windows 2000 without error. There must be some problem with linux reading from it though. What about the older emc with redhat? When I burned that cd years ago this pc was somewhat up to date. Are there serious problems getting that up and running? I am microstepping with the xylotex drive. I have been using turbocnc which will run on an ancient computer even with microstepping. What will I gain in performance with linuxcnc and how does that compare with an old version of emc?

jaredts wrote:

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I think it must be the cd drive after thinking about it and reading a bit. The drive has worked fine--I just installed windows 2000 without error. There must be some problem with linux reading from it though. What about the older emc with redhat? When I burned that cd years ago this pc was somewhat up to date. Are there serious problems getting that up and running? I am microstepping with the xylotex drive. I have been using turbocnc which will run on an ancient computer even with microstepping. What will I gain in performance with linuxcnc and how does that compare with an old version of emc?

Well, you will be a decade out of date and nobody will remember enough to support you
with the redhat version. Microstepping plus the Taig leadscrew are going to cause some
problems. 30 IPM needs 30 * 20 (TPI) * 2000 (microsteps/rev I think) / 60 = 20,000
steps/second, which may be a big problem with a 533 MHz CPU. The slowest I
run today is 1 GHz and that is with hardware step generators. Also, those are
Pentium 3 and up CPUs, yours might be a Pentium II which is a lot slower than the
CPU clock rate might indicate.

Also, weak CD drives may read commercially manufactured CDs more easily than
writable ones that you created.

Jon

Hi

I think unfortunately the bottom line here is that you need to cut the psychological attachment to your computer and get another one.

The hardest thing to do sometimes is look at something dispassionately from the outside and weigh up time spent trying to make something work which is not up to the job, or just buying something that is.

For £50 you could buy a P4 2.8Ghz with 1MB RAM (ex - corporate desktop) on Ebay which will run Ubuntu 8.04 with the latest Linuxcnc flawlessly.
You just need to choose wisely, check out the hardware list.
wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Latency-Test

I have a P3 600Mhz ish in the loft. I tried pressing it into service once and whilst it would load 8.04, it ran appallingly and I soon assigned it to the spares pile.
My 'it might come in useful' nature will not quite yet allow me to ditch it, but in reality, aside from the PSU, case fan and some connectors, I have mentally scrapped it.

regards

I hear you loud and clear. I just spent several hours over the last couple of days trying to get several linux distros to load so I could use this pc for something. Windows 2000 loaded and ran great, but with the flash players and such that it will support, its almost useless even for browsing the web. I'll probably throw it in the trash. I have another pc that's an athlon 64 3000+ with msi k8n neo3 motherboard. 1.5 gb ram and an nvidia geforce gt520 video card. Anyone see a problem with that setup, or should I start another post to ask that question? I have been running ubuntu for years on this machine and it has always worked great. 12.04 is loaded on it now.

There is another MSI MB with Athlon 64 3.1GHz on the list I linked to, which returned reasonable figures so you might be OK.
The nvidea card is always a potential problem, you may have to use the opensource nv driver (wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?TroubleShooting)

Since you already have it, best just to test it. Install on a new partition created from free disk space so as not to mess up your existing install and try it out.

It will no doubt run 10.04, but it may be worth trying 8.04 too, it is of a crossover age where it will probably run both, but you may find 8.04 still runs with better latency figures.

regards

but it may be worth trying 8.04 too

Absolutely, and you can just start by booting from the live CDs and running the latency test from there.
You will still be able to update the 8.04 version to the current Linuxcnc.

Rick G

I'm using Debian Lenny+Rtai+LinuxcncV2.51 on a Pentium Celeron 766/384RAM. (gigabyte motherboard, off board nvidia video card).
Many things are disable(cron, sound card, etc), using Xorg+Jwm. My little mill machine is a Sieg X1 with stock axis screws.
Latency is a little bad(27000ns) but i can use without problems. If I use Axis front end the cpu go to 100% in use, memory 180MB when milling. With mini or tklinuxcnc front end the cpu run in 65%. Maybe if I use Xvesa(TinyX) instead Xorg I can get a lighter OS.
Before Debian Lenny i tried Ubuntu 8.04 without success.