Re: LinuxCNC and Laptop
The Mesa ethernet cards work very well and you don't need much of a PC to run it. Here's mine which I've just finished mounting to the touchscreen monitor I use.
I just used the last of the 32 inputs on my Mesa 7i76e today.
The problem with laptops is that LinuxCNC requires a low latency PC and with all of the power saving features of a laptop, they are very rarely suitable for LinuxCNC. The Gigabyte Brix shown has a Celeron J1900 processor and only cost me about $100.
Machinekit is a fork of LinuxCNC. Other than that I know nothing about it.
I don't know why on earth you would consider purchasing a commercial Windows based CNC system like UCCNC or a USB/Ethernet motion board when for a few $ more you can have a free open source system and a Mesa ethernet card with 5 stepgens, 32 inputs, 16 outputs, spindle control, encoder interface, 2 MPG inputs, 3-4 Analog inputs, and basically infinite expansion. For example, I could add 2 more daughter cards to treble the inputs for 15 stepgens etc and more cards via and amazing support from the vendor on the Linuxcnc forum. There is a reason why a number of commercial vendors who have adopted LinuxCNC.
Rod Webster
www.vehiclemods.net.au