Poll: who still uses RTAI-only hardware drivers? (STG, Motenc, VTI, EVOREG, AX5

We need to know who still uses the drivers that only work on RTAI kernels. They are all old ISA/PCI/parallel-port cards:

• Servo-to-Go (STG)
• Motenc
• Vigilant VTI
• Siemens EVOREG
• Axiom AX5214H
• Opto22 AC5
• pci_8255
• Advantech PCL720
• Pluto-P (pluto_servo / pluto_step)

If you run any of these cards with LinuxCNC on an RTAI kernel, please post here with the card name.Pluto-P is a special case: its drivers can likely be made to work on regular preempt-rt installs, so if you have one and are willing to test, please say so.Technical background: github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/issues/4505

I boot vmlinuz 3.4-9-rtai-686-rtae  (linux version 12.04 LTS) on Compaq Presario Desktop and run vi parallel cable.  I think this uses the pci 8255 driver, but not sure. 

Sorry should have said, that I am looking for who still run these, and has plans to update, or could help test a port for the drivers to uspace.

@858PSJ Are you planning to update to linuxcnc 2.9 or 2.10? Willing to test a uspace driver?

The system I use is a Compaq Presario Desktop having 3.3 GB memory, AMD Athelon 64X2 dual core processor 4200+ x2. 
Linux 12.04 setup says 32 bit os.  Its 196 GB hard disk currently setup with the rtai kernel booting on one partition  and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS booting on the other partition.  There's about 80 GB left on either partition.  The mill I have is a Taig 4019 3 Axis  and a cnc rotary table, so its a 4 axis machine.  The mill controller board is a xylotex XS3525/8S-4  which supports 4 stepper motors.  The Taig mill has no sensers and neither does the rotary table so testing feed synchronization isn't (as in tapping) easy.  As far as updating is concerned I'd liketo replace the 24.04 LTS with a linux cnc kernel that still supports my mill but don't know if one is available and the rtai kernel continues to work so the only thing wrong is interrnet access, I keep the net shut of when running the mill with the rtai kernel anyway.  The system is cabled through a router that's supposed to be 100MB/sec.  I don't know how much disk space may be needed if we're rebuilding kernels or Axis from source code, hopefully 80GB might be enough  Also I don't have a lot of code ready to test the synch between linear motion and the cnc rotary table which I mostly use for sharpening endmills. If testing the rtai driver means sending some code to be installed on the rtai partition, I can do that too, the 24.04 LTS machine can read and write in the rtai partition but the rtai os doesn't understand the format of the 24 partition.

40 GB would be plenty, if you could run gparted and move your partitions around making space for a third system, and install debian trixie, maybe with xfce, we could try and develop support for pci 8255 on the preempt-rt kernel, and you could test it out.

preempt-rt kernels are easy to install,
sudo apt install linux-image-rt-amd64 linux-headers-rt-amd64
Is all you need for that, you will have to run in place, so you want to git pull the repo, and build locally uspace and run in place.
Once you got that working, let me know, and I will prepare something for you to test.

I don't recommend this kind of fun to anyone, but LinuxCNC with Trixie can be installed and run from an 8 GB partition.
For a standard xfce4 installation, 16 GB is enough.
I'm talking about just LinuxCNC without any CAD/CAM or other utilities.
Of course, today it is difficult to buy such a small disk and there is no technical or economic justification for it, but it gives you an idea of ​​how much is needed.

Moderator tommylight indicates that no 8255 is installed, instead, there's just a parallel port?  I'm using the "native" parallel port on the Compaq Presario,  Running dmesg on the rtai kernel says:
parport_pc 00:07 reported by plug& play ACPI
parport0 PC-style @ 0x378 irq 7 [PCSPP,EPP]
lp0: using parport0 (interrupt driven)

This could mean there is a version of linuxcnc kernel that already supports a "native" parallel port.  Certainly if there's an ISO image that already supports a parallel port my hardware setup isn't going to have the desired affect of testing against an 8255. 



 

parallel port is supported, you can already upgrade and use parallel port, I did not understand what Tommy's comment was referring to, my bad...

then nevermind we do not have testers for these very old drivers, we will cleanup...