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Well, I can't really comment since I don't know Jon Elson's area of competence - emulating a parallel port for example is AFAIK totally unnecessary (it's another "no PIOs" workaround from PC land...

Unfortunately Linux kernel development is just one of the many subjects of which I find myself on the wrong end of the learning curve! Reading about it now.

I'll check out the miniemc2 project for...

Well, here I am, talking to the forum using a Raspberry Pi! It's running a Debian Squeeze image from a 2GB sdcard, LXDE GUI, Iceweasel (a.k.a Debian port of Firefox). FullHD HDMI display, wireless...

Apparantly that's wrong. I was speaking yesterday to the guy who designed the RPi, and he tells me that they now have FCC approval as well.

It looks like the RPi is no longer vaporware. It passed EMC testing recently (not to be confused with the EMC CNC app!), thus gained CE approval, and the first few thousand final production boards...

Hmm - not so obvious to me. You must be privy to information I don't have - because no HDMI out I've used in the past has needed a GPU, and I see nothing in the peripheral notes that it's needed...

Closed source drivers? Since we won't be using them that should hardly matter. The GPU core is closed to us, but we don't need the GPU to do CNC. The 700MHz ARM core should be plenty, and the...

The GPU on the RPi seems to be, unfortunately, useless for our purposes, whether you consider it the primary or secondary core. The GPU seems to be completely undocumented, which my engineers mind...

Nice find - so a real time Linux kernel for ARM already exists, and runs on a board with half the SDRAM of the RPi.

No, it just requires PIOs, which it accesses via a HAL. It so happens that the PC HAL uses the PC parallel port - obviously because the PC doesn't have other PIO options. An RPi version would use a...

I assume you're aware that there are (off the top of my head) three Linux distros already ported to the RPi, and available as sdcard image downloads from the RPi website.

However, I believe one of...

@zool. You write as if I've been trying to persuade you to abandon your beloved CNC gizmos - I have not. If you are happy with your existing setup then fine - that is absolutely no concern of mine!
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There is mention of an HDMI daughterboard being available.

It's not as bad as all that.

First off, the CPU is an ARM (at least the CPU of concern to us is an ARM), which is already a very important platform for Linux. True, a set of drivers needs to be...

As they say "misery loves company", so I quite understand that someone who has shelled out (say) $2000 for an all-singing all-dancing solution does not then want to hear that he could have had a...

I would be wary of that approach. First, it would require a lot of Linux expertise to decide what can go and what needs to stay. Second, if you start with a working OS and take bits out, chances are...

Hi Thomas,
When I first heard of the RPi it did sound remarkably similar to the processor and devtool evaluation kits I've used for years. For example the old EB30 Atmel ARM7 eval board I played...

That is undoubtedly true. I am in the position of considering what I would like in a CNC mill - I do not yet own one.

I have heard of G-code, that is exactly what I had in mind as the script,...

Maybe I came across too aggressive in that last post. I don't want to get involved in some pointless flame war.

My objective would be to get the PC out of the workshop, not eliminate it from my...

It's clearly you that doesn't understand.

I said that in the scenario you described, the real CNC computer is actually the external board. The PC just creates the plans and uses USB as a network...

Yes, that would make it reliable. Basically in that case the external board is the real CNC computer, USB only being used as a medium to copy the data - not to directly control the operation.

The...

Hi folks. I come at this from the pov as both a programmer of embedded systems (including projects for the ARM), and also as a hobby machinist - I own a Sieg SC4 hobby lathe. I'm considering getting...