10.04 problems on Dell GX 610 and D600 and HP 140

Thought i would give an update in order:

HP DL140 server (2 x 2.4GHz Xeon's) 2 GB ram, 2 x 80 GB HD - note the PCI interface here is an XPCI slot which can use a standard PCI card as long as it has the extra slot towards the front of the card.

I got the parallel port card working just by changing the address in stepcon after checking 'LSPCI -v'. My findings were though that even with turning everything off in the bios that i could the latency was fine but spikes would appear causing it to go above acceptable levels. Tried 8.04 but suffered from what looks like voltage issues causing the X axis motors to stutter (i have a pair here).LAPIC made no difference.

The Dell's

Same as above but high latency from the outset on 10.04. It was better with 8.04 and messing withe SMI helped too (not much)

Finally i pulled the disk of my regular PC which is a quad core Packard Bell with 3GB of ram and slammed in a spare disk to trash and play. Latency was excellent even though i had to put in the parallel port card (typical modern PC with no port). Saw the same problems with he motors as above

Conclusion

Forget the initial problem of getting the PP card working. Latency has a big part to play but i believe the main issue is the signaling from the PP card is to erratic. Will need to put a scope on it and check the outputs (won't bother). I think just buying a NETMOS chip set card does not guarantee good working ports. We will probably see more issues like this coming along as more PC's loose their PP's and would ask that if anybody has good recomendations of PP cards ten to start adding them to good hardware list (will still depend on what PC it's being plugged into)

I should have an ASROCK P4 board by the weekend with built in PP and a separate Graphics card. I shall have to see what happens and remain optimistic

step4linux wrote:

Andy123 wrote:

Just want to make sure people understand that "lapic" may not work on some PCs and based on reply in the mailing list there is no way around.
I went back to 8.04 just because ot this

I agree, this is simply the frustrating truth in some cases, at least as far as a standard EMC is concerned.
But in some cases the grub lapic solution works and is very simple to implement also for Linux non-experts.
So give it a try and good luck ...

Gerd

I tried lapic and getting message:
Local APIC not detected. Using dummy APIC emulation.
That according to the mailing list has not solution except use build non-smp kernel that is not for beginners...

from Alex Joni:

If you get the error message:
[ 0.080250] Local APIC not detected. Using dummy APIC emulation.
then you are out of luck, and you need a non-SMP RTAI install (hardy 8.04
for example).

How are you driving the step motors? Maybe the interface has problems with 3.3V signaling (most modern PP cards will have 3.3V levels)

I'm using an all in one Chinese board. There could be a problem with enough to drive it but i doubt that be the issue. this card worked well previously on my old HP laptop (i gave this away). It works ok on the dell machines with built in ports albeit with high latency issues. I will get a new machine up and running and take it from there. It is a good excuse to upgrade and get rid of the old stuff so really a win win situation. if there is still a problem i have another driver setup to use until i source a replacement. I could always add more supply to the port (5v) if needed. Will need to do more testing there later.

Just to let you know new machine built last night and all working great with nice low latency. Just another headache now with the pin configuration? the set up of my old hal will not work??? if it's not one thing it's another. Will post the problem in the right section. Thtnks for everybody's input

Did you check tha parport adress ?

Hello,

For what it is worth this week the hard disk died on one of my Dell machines (GX520) so I decided to upgrade to 10.04 from 8.04. Followed several threads and tried the fixes..no luck. Everything loads, parallel port is OK but latency is terrible. Machine was good with 8.04, may try again latter if solution is found but for now went back to 8.04

Rick G

Oh no hope you don't end up with the same hassles i did. I went for an ASUS board in the end with a separate Nvidia 880 256mb graphics card. There were some issues installing over the top of the existing install so i needed to make sure the drive was completely erased before it would work. Most problems now are getting any of the CAM software to work