Originally Posted by NC Cams I'm amazed that Bridgeport did 4 axis machining with their VMC 1000's back in late 90's and only used a DOS box and BMDC3 for control. Some were 386 and some 486 but no Pentiums. In fact, you can't even use a Pentium faster than 133 to retrofit to the "legacy" systems.
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But a distinction has to be made as to what was doing the processing, did the BMDC3 card have its own processor for motion control?
There is a distinct difference between a PC processor doing the actual motion calculation and a motion control card, which now have 32bit RISC processors dedicated to the motion trajectory.
Galil and others where doing it this way back in the 80's for 8 axis control.
I am still using some of their DOS capable Legacy cards for simple/low cost retrofit projects.
Al.