Need Help!- Ubuntu-EMS2 on Thumb Drive?

[kb9jlo]

I thought I saw a note from someone here setting up Ubuntu/EMC2 on a thumb drive. I can't find that note...

I have a laptop that is less the hard drive that I was thinking about setting up as my machine controller this way. I just ordered a 2 GB thumb drive from Buy.com for $10. Laptop also has a bad keyboard but I have a nifty old server keyboard that has a built-in trackball that I'm going to use. But this way I have a decent machine for the controller (1.2 GHz) and I end up with a NICE LCD screen.

Dan
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[samco]

I think I used https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent instructions and used the emc2 live cd. If you do a similar search you will find others.

Does the laptop have a cdrom? I would boot off of the emc2 live cd and run latency-test from a terminal. laptops usually don't run real time apps very well as all the power saving screws it up. If your really lucky it will work. If your sort of lucky and it has an intel chipset you might be able to fix it with the smi patch http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emc...apperSMIIssues

Or it won't work at all..

sam

[tai42]

On the laptop I use (an old Gateway) there is a BIOS setting that turned off all the power saving features and brought the latency down to within the usable range. You could set it for something like "Max. Performance" or "Max. Battery Life" and in the performance mode it worked. (In the battery mode, it didn't which is what lead to me searching for it in the first place. ) Might be worth a quick peek in the BIOS setup on your laptop.

[kb9jlo]

Thanks for all the information. I will look at it and see what I can find out. My want for the laptop was then you have everything in one box, so to speak. And I had it, and... Well you know.
Hopefully, I can get the laptop to work.
Dan