Know what really bugs me?

[revwarguy]

ZZZzzzzzzz.......

I love to play with my CNC machine, but there is one thing that really bugs me.

First off, let me say that I understand the folly of instant gratification, and have invested lots of time in some very long term projects. I also appreciate taking one's time to get it right, and try to teach and preach patience, especially when working with power tools. Normally I am a gentle soul who is more than content to look the other way at most things.

However, when all I want to do is move the carriage of the machine a bit, or move it just out of the the way because the last position I left it in is now inconvenient to place the new piece of material, I am FORCED TO BOOT WINDOWS and wait for it to come up in order to launch Mach 3 just to move the machine a bit.

Now, I don't want to start a long discussion about how to make Windows boot faster (been there, done that - it still boots slow) or how much better Linux is over Windows (I have been a Unix/Linux user/developer and it can also be pokey.)

I once read about the thousands of man-years wasted on this planet by people standing around waiting for operating systems to boot.

I guess I just wanted to rant a bit while the system boots.

ZZZzzzzzzz.......

[ger21]

I hear that Windows 7 can boot in about 30 seconds.
If it makes you feel better, on our $100K router at work, it takes almost 5 minutes for XP to boot and the control to start running.

[Al_The_Man]

Originally Posted by revwarguy I am FORCED TO BOOT WINDOWS and wait for it to come up in order to launch Mach 3 just move the machine. I once read about the thousands of man-years wasted on this planet by people standing around waiting for operating systems to boot.

I have been saying that for years , you don't need windows to run a CNC machine!
Unfortunately many commercial systems are also going the Windows based route.
I am still using some legacy motion cards and software and it is like night and day as far as loading the program because it runs as a stand alone program, not under one, and these do not have to have blistering fast processors to boot.
Al.

[HuFlungDung]

Maybe someday, some will write a piece of software called "Operating System Generator" and it will allow you configure a bare minimum 'Windows' OS, burn it to a CD and then we can all have exactly what we need for a specific purpose, and no more

[Bubba]

HuFlungDung,
I have one, it is called DOS! I run a solid state drive and it works real quick. As for moving an axis unpowered, I have stub shafts and can move an axis wherever I want!

[hemsworthlad]

Twin shaft motors and a cordless drill. . . Zooooommm i,m gone.

My dual core Win7 laptop takes 68 seconds.

[stk2008]

Originally Posted by hemsworthlad Twin shaft motors and a cordless drill. . . Zooooommm i,m gone. My dual core Win7 laptop takes 68 seconds.

thats what i was thinking do it like this.

but if you do not have limit switches and rely on soft limits be care full when u travel to the end of the bed and expect it to slow it wont :O if you do not reset them after moving the axis without mach3 or what ever program u use or it will still think its where you left it.

[thebodger@roger]

We still have some older controls that booted the whole OS off of a few hundred kilobytes of EPROM memory. Allthough not many bells and whistles, but it got the job done. And on that thought , how many operators actually use all these bling functions? With the price of a CAD CAM system in reach of even the smallest mom pop operation, why put it on the controller too? And it's never powerful or user friendly on the machine side. Why not a MS DOS based control that boots off a flash drive, and an add-on cheap axis control card for real-time closed loop control. Milltronics did it this way with their Partner 5 controls. If you want to see some rediculously long boot up times, check out the Heidenhain and Boston Digital (Bostomatic) controls. I can almost finish a cigarette while it boots.
BTW our latest machine is a state of the art Roders high speed linear motor gantry machine, and guess what? It has two plain old IBM PC clone boards as a control. The main real time axis controller runs MS DOS 6. The Windows XP is the front end for the operator. Need less to say the DOS boots in 1 second

[mlabruyere]

I leave mine running in low power mode. Disk drives shut down, monitor and video card is powered down. Push the button on the monitor and wiggle mouse and it is up to full power in about 10 seconds.

[mlabruyere]

Originally Posted by stk2008 but if you do not have limit switches and rely on soft limits be care full when u travel to the end of the bed and expect it to slow it wont :O if you do not reset them after moving the axis without mach3 or what ever program u use or it will still think its where you left it.

If I shutdown my PC and start everything back up Mach has no clue where the gantry really is.

[marzetti]

Linux and EMC2. I'll never go back to windoz! You'll see Jon's setup wednesday and I'm sure you'll agree.

[Al_The_Man]

Originally Posted by Bubba I have one, it is called DOS! I run a solid state drive and it works real quick.

That is exactly what I referred to, DOS is Disk Operating System, IOW all it does is, load the program into system memory, and then run it, if you require to access the external system hardware then the 'DOS' is then and only then used to communicate with it.
I remember when the very first version of AutoCad came out for the first version of windows, someone, in the University of Minnesota, I believe, came out with a CAD program that was indistinguishable from ACAD, But written in assembler, it looked exactly the same, was way smaller in code and ran many times faster.
In the early days, there were a few operating systems and PC's that were much superior to Bill Gates DOS, especially in the area of memory management and graphics, with IBM pouring $$ into software for the Bill Gates version, unfortunately the best did not win.
Al.