THC Stopped Working - Both THC Enabled and THC Active not illuminated

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31 Mar 2022 06:50 #238872 by little_sparky
Hey All, 

I have successfully been running PlasmaC for around 18 months now without any problems. (isnt connected to internet so hasnt updated over this time either)

Yesterday I cut a sheet of 16mm steel for the first time.

Today my THC is not working  . I am using 'Auto' THC, as I always have and have not changed any material parameters. I am not sure if it was working whilst cutting the 16mm or not as the parts were only small and float swtich was not activated.

The 'THC Enabled' and 'THC Active' lights are not illuminated, however I am still able to read cut volts. The lights on my THCAD-10 are still illuminated.

Does anyone know if I could have burnt someting out whilst cutting the 16mm? is this just a coincidence? How can I go about troubleshooting/fixing this problem?

Any help is very much appreciated.

(before someone else says it, yes I do intend on trying out QtPlasmaC I just need to get the time to read up about it and make it happen. What computer would people suggest works best with this? As I have had nightmares with the ones I used to setup my existing configuration)

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31 Mar 2022 07:07 #238876 by phillc54
PlasmaC did have a separate THC enable in the material file, is it enabled for that material?
 

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31 Mar 2022 10:33 #238885 by snowgoer540

What computer would people suggest works best with this? As I have had nightmares with the ones I used to setup my existing configuration)


I am not familiar with the nightmares you had setting up your current config, if it was install related or hardware related or both. A friend of mine had freezing issues with a Gigabyte Brix with the J1900 processor, I even bought one (and sold it shortly thereafter) to try to work out what the issue was and never made it anywhere, just doesnt like linux I guess (in all seriousness there was an issue logged in intel's known issues list, but I cant recall what the exact issue was, rest assured they arent going to fix it :) ).

Otherwise, I am not sure what you are running currently, but if it runs PlasmaC it will likely run QtPlasmaC.

Anyways, I made this guide some time ago, it's like baking a cake (click by click, etc). Following the package install route should yield you a machine running MX Linux 19.4 a bit nicer of a user interface than the standard linuxcnc distro) based on Debian 10:

forum.linuxcnc.org/9-installing-linuxcnc...red-toward-new-users

Be sure to back up your config/important files before you start!

Phill made a nice migration script to get your setup from PlasmaC to QtPlasmaC: linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/html/plasma/qtpl...tml#qt_modify-config

A lot has changed, and it may be worth re-creating your setup in pncconf.

All that said, I don't know what you use your table for, but if you are happy where you are at and it's working for you, staying put is also an option :)

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31 Mar 2022 19:48 #238930 by kramerda
Snowgoer....any known issues with low cost PCs running on AMD 3 or 5 series Ryzen cpu

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31 Mar 2022 20:17 - 31 Mar 2022 20:18 #238934 by snowgoer540
Im not sure, unfortunately I dont l know all the different hardware combos, etc. but FWIW, I do most of my dev work inside a virtual machine running on an AMD FX8350, with no issue.
Last edit: 31 Mar 2022 20:18 by snowgoer540.

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31 Mar 2022 21:27 #238938 by tommylight
There are some Ryzen systems i have/had tested for latency here:
forum.linuxcnc.org/18-computer/38838-har...ts-used-pc-s?start=0
From useless to very good.
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01 Apr 2022 03:32 #238965 by little_sparky
Today's update.

Went back into the shed and started it up and THC decides to work today. Perhaps there was a bug on startup, I'm not quite sure.
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01 Apr 2022 03:59 #238966 by little_sparky
 

I am not familiar with the nightmares you had setting up your current config, if it was install related or hardware related or both. A friend of mine had freezing issues with a Gigabyte Brix with the J1900 processor, I even bought one (and sold it shortly thereafter) to try to work out what the issue was and never made it anywhere, just doesnt like linux I guess (in all seriousness there was an issue logged in intel's known issues list, but I cant recall what the exact issue was, rest assured they arent going to fix it :) ).

So far I have tested
- Windows XP Home edition
- Windows 7 Home Premium
- Dell Optiplex 990 (currently in use)
- Gigabyte GB-BACE-3160 

All computers had the same issue where they would set off the:

"Watchdog has bit! (set the .has-bit pin to False to resume)
Unexpected realtime delay on task 0 with period 105000"

The gigabyte mini pc would freeze all the time before I could even launch anything.

I am still not sure if the issue is related to the computer or if the error is coming from a power connection (checked every connection at least 5 times) or the Mesa 7i76e.

At the minute, the Optiplex only occasionally shows the message. 1/3 startups it will come up at the start of opening PlasmaC (within the first 5 minutes), and when it does this I may need another 3 times turning everything off and on before it comes good.

The times when it does not come up in the first 5 minutes, I can usually (9/10) run it for hours without an issue. 

This week I have been on a hot run and only encountered the issue 1/7 days, othe weeks it is 5/7 days. It is completely random.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I would be happy to send the gigabyte to anyone in Australia who would like to test it, and I would also be happy to pay for a computer with ethernet connection that someone has successfully installed PlasmaC or QtPlasmaC on and ran with their system.
 

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01 Apr 2022 09:11 #238974 by snowgoer540

So far I have tested
- Windows XP Home edition
- Windows 7 Home Premium

? I dont follow this part

The gigabyte mini pc would freeze all the time before I could even launch anything.

I had similar experience with the Brix.

Does anyone have any ideas?

In searching a bit to see if there was anything I could suggest to try, I see you have gone through a lot of the options with PCW.

In this post:
forum.linuxcnc.org/plasmac/39317-watchdo...-bit?start=10#171559

He asked for the results of (later corrected to below in the last post):
halcmd show param *.tmax

But the thread seems to have died without the results.


He also suggested:

On possible thing to check is if a slower servo thread helps, so you might try 2 ms
(2000000 ns) This will require changing all the PID P terms to 500


Have you tried this? This is necessary when running PlasmaC on a raspberry pi 4, and has no noticeable effect on performance.

The Dell 990 uses a 82579LM Ethernet chip, and I have seen some reports of this
being buggy and unreliable for realtime not sure if this is the issue here

If it is an issue an add-in Ethernet card should fix the problem

Also a possible solution.
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01 Apr 2022 09:56 #238978 by rodw
Sparky, there is an address here you can send your brix to here. www.vmn.com.au/
I'll try and get it going for you when I have a free moment. You can also contact me through that site via chat or the contact us page. 

I ran a Brix J1900 for a long time on my spaceship and replaced it with another PC when Mint refused to run Python 3 in master.
I now have it running again using Debian unstable and the linuxcnc-uspace package in that version of Debian.

I also have a Brix 3160, probably the same model you have which I also had running on the spaceship. Its now in daily use using Linux Mint on my Packing bench. It ran Windows 10 for a while but I trashed that OS after it started to blue screen every time I printed something. 

Sometimes the J1900 would freeze but never when running a program. Only when idle.. This has been powered up for a month now with no bad behaviour.

Just note you cannot use the internal wifi card, pluck it out and get a USB wifi dongle. I use an Asus nano.
The latency is around 15 usec with the 5.16 kernel which I found gobsmacking. Loading a program or opening a program will see a single spike out to about 110 usec which is still perfect for a mesa card.

I'll post a quick screen shot in a sec..
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