I use a 160 MHz pentium to run my own stepping software. it can calculate the timing
for each step (for several motors) without any problems. (i.e: solve 2nd order equation
for each step, to figure out when the the next step will be, based on current speed and
acceleration) The only reason i need a pentium is that it contains a 64-bit clock, that
counts at 160 MHz, and can be directly accessed with a single assembly instruction.
(also no timer runover problems, as long as the milling takes less than 400 years :-)
I run under dos, with all interrupts disabled (even keyboard!), and may code generator
builds in a full motor stop every 100 moves, so i can load the next batch of moves from
disk into memory without any problems.
but other stepping software may be less efficient. :-)
(i will publish my software soon. (it's small and written in 16-bit pascal, with some
32-bit assembly instructions thrown in.)
jaap. |