With the release of PathPilot v2.0 (PP2) the base operating system is now supported, at least until 2019, meaning we can easily install additional software to perform desktop duties. PP2 also provides builtin support for the 7I92 Ethernet Anything I/O card from MESA Electronics.

So I decided to upgrade my PCNC 1100 computer to make it more capable with both PP2 and desktop duties. I also wanted a compact computer that I could mount next to my monitor and keyboard for easy access freeing up space inside my stand.

Having 7I92 support means the computer no longer needs a card mounted inside of it making it possible to use a small form factor computer. So the requirements were small form factor, dual NIC’s, compatibility with LinuxCNC and good latency. Yeah, one could forego the dual NIC’s & use WiFi but I much prefer a hardwired connection.

So I found a computer from Shuttle called a DH110 that meets all my requirements. I populated it with a Intel Skylake Dual Core 3.7GHz CPU (I3-6100), 8GB of RAM and a M.2 64GB SSD. This is way more than PP2 needs but like I said I wanted a good performing desktop out of it too. This thing blows the pants off my very expensive Tormach controller I had to buy with my 15L Slant-Pro.

Next I purchased a 7I92H Anything I/O Ethernet card from MESA Electronics. There are 3 versions of this card depending on the connector desire for the P2 location. I chose the 7I92H because it had a standard male 26-pin IDC connector which facilitates a 26-pin ribbon cable between it and the Tormach Break-Out Board or BOB. This gets rid of the 25-Pin Parallel Port cable between the CPU and control box replacing it with a much smaller cat 5e cable.

Next I mounted the computer underneath the keyboard. So now the only cables running from the machine to my console are power for the computer and monitor and 2 cat 5e cables – 1 to the 7I92H board mounted inside the machine control box and 1 connected to my local network.

So the only difficulty I ran into was with the dual NIC’s used on the Shuttle DH110. For reasons I don’t understand the 7I92 would not run reliably using the Intel I211 controller chip which just happen to default eht0 used by the 7I92. Luckily the other NIC used is a Intel i219 and the 7I92 appears happy using this controller chip. While I was researching this problem I noticed talk about the 7I92 having compatibility problems with certain Ethernet controller chips so be careful selecting a NIC controller.

So with the DH110 I was able to change the assignment of eth0 to the Intel I219 controller chip and use the I211 (eth1) for my local network connection without any problem. This means you must know which holes to plug your cables into on the DH110.

Like previous versions of PP the standard install only creates 3 Hard Disk partitions utilizing only 29GB of HD space no matter it size. Since I wanted more for my desktop duties I decided to do the standard install, then use GParted Live to modify them to use all the HD space. So the standard install creates 3 partition as follows:

sda1 ext4 13.22 GiB boot
sda2 swap 1000.00 Mib
sda3 ext4 14.65 GiB
I want to increase the swap file (sda2) to 4 GB then expand sda3 to use the remaining space. Since sda1 is generally reserved for static files utilized by the system it should not be necessary to increase it’s size.

Using GParted Live it’s best to shift/move sda3 by 3GB freeing up space to expand sda2, then expand sda2 by 3GB, then expand sda3 to use all the remaining space.

I decided to increase the swap file size to help prevent swapping when running multiple desktop apps.

Finally I changed the boot process to boot into the desktop, created a PP desktop launcher, adjusted the display resolution to that of the monitor native resolution, setup networking, updated the system and installed my desktop applications. Now I have both PP controller and desktop all in one.