FEAR

[MrWild]

I have the parts. All the parts I need. Mesa boards, cables, latest EMC 2.2.2.1, Dell computers PIII 1,000 or a PIV 2.2GZ, and wiring diagrams of my Crusader M. I've traced the wires. I'm fairly sure how they would attach to the Mesa boards, just keep stopping because of two things.

1. The Crusader still works well.

2. I'm afraid the entire project would never get finished if I hit a glitch in setting it up. Watching the video of the sail boat steel keel being machined on a tormach made me understand the power I could have, just unsure of what problems I'm going to run into.

3. I started assemblinjg the computer before I went to the Linux OS and now I get the blue screen of death. I figure I'll yank everything out except for the bare bopnes, and then install EMC and then the Mesa board. I'd like to do some preconfiguring before I make the leap of gutting the Crusader out. Is that possible?

[Big John T]

The latest is 2.2.5

John

[Ray Henry]

Originally Posted by MrWild 1. The Crusader still works well.

I'm a believer in the notion that if it works, and does what needs be done, don't screw with it. The question to ask here is, "are there essential abilities that you will gain after the conversion."

Originally Posted by MrWild 2. I'm afraid the entire project would never get finished if I hit a glitch in setting it up. Watching the video of the sail boat steel keel being machined on a tormach made me understand the power I could have, just unsure of what problems I'm going to run into.

There is a lot of help available. The IRC channels are always open and help of one sort or another is available many hours of the day. If the active folk don't know an answer they will often suggest someone to contact. I've seen guys come to chat and folk will ask for pictures and before long a serious discussion leads to things to test, things to report and such. Building, retrofitting, and servicing machine tools is a lot easier these days than it was when I started.

Originally Posted by MrWild 3. I started assemblinjg the computer before I went to the Linux OS and now I get the blue screen of death. I figure I'll yank everything out except for the bare bopnes, and then install EMC and then the Mesa board. I'd like to do some preconfiguring before I make the leap of gutting the Crusader out. Is that possible?

Yep you've got the goods and a good idea. You can easily install the EMC2 from the CD. I'd pop it into the drive and let it boot and run from the disk first. That way you will know how well the PC is doing. You can even run the latency-test although it is not as critical with a Mesa card and servo systems.

Now once you've satisfied yourself that the live boot produces a working system, then install it. If you already have another working OS on the drive, choose the shrink the existing partition and install in the empty space. It should find that other OS and set up the boot loader so that you have a choice when you boot.

Once you have a PC running from the EMC2 CD then shut it all down and pop the mesa card in. I leave one PCI slot empty on the cable side of the card so that I've got spare room and can see the little diagnostic lights. If you put the mesa card as the last one down you can always put a small mirror or a dead CD in the bottom of the case and use it to look at the diagnostics.

Now power it up and start EMC2 using the Mesa configuration. It's named m5i20. You need the card in the computer for this configuration to start up. Once EMC is up, you should see the leds turn green and you have a working CNC control. Oops. I had a Motenc card in the slot when I tried to start the m5i20. That was a no go.

Okay with the proper card, EMC comes up and the set of LEDs tell me I've got the firmware loaded. The display I'm seeing is tkemc. This is the classic test GUI. You can change this later by editing the INI file. Under the Scripts menu you see "HAL Show." Click it and under the Pins tree (click the little + in front of Pins) you'll see axis, iocontrol, m5i20. That is the one you want to look at so click on the name and you'll see all the pins available on the m5i20. You can scroll down through and see what is hooked to what. The ==> indicates something going through the Mesa card to the program. The <== indicates a signal going through the card to the machine. For example a line near the bottom looks like this.

7 bit IN FALSE m5i20.0.out-12 <== LubeOn

This line tells me that if I connect the lube pump relay or timer to the output pin 12 it will turn lube on when EMC thinks the machine needs lube (machine on). If you have the IO breakout board you could connect it and watch the state of that pin change when you come out of estop and turn the machine on.

In similar fashion there is a line that connects a LubeLevel signal to the EMC. It's pin 14 in. You could try pulling that pin to ground and see what happens to the running control. Connecting the fault signals should also cause an estop.

And last but not least is the fact that you can change most any of this stuff around because the HAL is like a big patch panel that lets you hook stuff just the way you need.

Hope this helps

Rayh