Let me answer your questions as best as I can:

Is there room for a "modular" approach in the design?

I very much like your idea of a modular design. Understand that making the design modular increased the cost somewhat as there are now multiple boards and interconnections. The reliability can also be less due to addition interconnections. That said, given the goal of a single design that can support a wide range of needs of hobbiest. I think a modular design would be worth the extra cost. How would you take the single spec above and break it down into sub componenets?

Would you be interested in providing the printed boards?

I would be willing to provide the Printed Circuit boards at cost for a while. or if a few people wanted to go together we could order a lot of boards at once and share in the expense.


Or licensing someone else to do that?

This design will be open source, so anybody can take the files I provide get boards made.


Target cost for the product(s)?

$75 or less for a completed controller. We will know more when we get the bill of material together, also the design will be scaleable and you will not need to stuff all the parts, only the ones for your application.

Will you also provide a source list for the materials?

I will provide a list of materials and a source for the materials and current cost.


Sorry to see the DOS legacy - considering that MACH2 bypasses some of the WIN "hangups"? Linux might be too small a market - certainly there are a bunch of DOS users out there still.

It is not my preference to use DOS, I would much rather use a Windows based application. But I want to stick with the Open source, free to all approach and the TurboCNC application fits this bill. If you or anyone knows of a Windows based application that is free to all I would love to consider it.



Would the board support LAPTOPS - low voltage (3.3 vice 5 on some parallel ports)?

Yes, The board will support laptops as it will have two sockets (or you could solder them in) for termination resistors allowing the customizing of the interface to various PCs.


Will the 5 volt logic be from onboard PS or could you pull it from a usb cable? (just wondering how much current you'll be requiring - I believe the USB passes 500mA on the 5 volt line)?

The 5V supply will not be on the board, but the requirements for the 5V are very low and you could use a cable to the USB (possibly) to supply this voltage. We will have to see, I have not done that before.


I'll follow with great interest - might be a soldering project I could get into - but would rather move off the DOS !

If you can help me figure out a way to move away from DOS and maintain the open source spirit I would love to.


Thanks for the feedback,

Greg