Are there any alternatives to parallel port signallings on EMC?

[Tom Brown]

I'm a Linux guy and I'd really like to run EMC. Are there any alternatives to parallel port signalling? I don't want to write any drivers, if I can help it.

I'd like to run fairly new hardware and most of the new stuff has no parallel port. .

At the moment, it looks like my alternatives are to find some old hardware with parallel port or PCI slots like a K7 or PIII, or go with XP, Mach 4, Gecho.

I have four machines right now and they're all PCIe boards with no parallel ports.


Any ideas?

[andy55]

this page lists supported hardware:
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emc...orted_Hardware

servotogo is an ISA card so probably out of the question.

Vital and Mesa are PCI cards with a handful of users for both cards which actively participate in the emc-list discussion so you are likely to get help and support

I've not heard of anyone using the Axiom or Siemens cards, but apparently they are supported too.

The pico boards work through the parallell port so they are not OK for you.

There's been discussion about ethernet based motion control on the emc list, but no code or anything published yet...

I guess it all depends on what hardware you want to control

[Tom Brown]

Thanks, Andy!


You've brought forth a couple of alternatives I didn't know existed.

[davidmb]

Hi Tom, there are a few PCIe parallel port cards on the market at the moment, I still have mboards with PCI and use 'add in' cards rather than the port on the mboard. Ports work out quite cheaply from about £12 up, the cheap ones seem to work ok with EMC2 and Ubuntu although it took a while to config them.

I looked at the alternatives and this worked out the cheapest solution for me. Had thought about a usb to parallel convertor using a PIC micro, but would still need to write an interface module for EMC.