|
art
HI Lester:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
The speed of the computer is usually unimportant as long as it is over about 800Mhz. The periodic pulseing or surging sounds like a process interferance. Did you run the drivertest.exe to see if the waveform is clean? Killing all the items in the msconfig/startup usually can clean this up,or setting the network interface to a locked baudrate instead of auto (auto causes a periodicv pulse due to a DMA access every second or two. ) , the DriverTest will usually show that if its the case. Thanks, Art www.artofcnc.ca Videos And Support Forums Users Map: ----- Original Message -----
From: "Lester Caine" <lester@...> To: <mach1mach2cnc@...> Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 3:16 AM Subject: [mach1mach2cnc] Slow computer Right guys ( and galls? ) Spent some time yesterday playing with a TaigCNC machine and comparing Mach3 with the DOS package that normally drives it. The original control program is running on an old machine that would probably not even load W2k so I had taken along an ITX box with W2k already installed. Only problem is that it is an 800MHz C3 processor, but since this is intended to be an embedded computer to go with the machine nothing else was installed on it. Operation from the DOS program is smooth and clean, but running the same tests in Mach3 give a number of problems. Even slowing things down, running just 25kHz and slower feed rates we have a decided 'pattern' to the noise from the stepper, like something is sticking every couple of seconds, while the DOS has none even at a faster rate. Is this likely to be due to the fact that the processor is not fast enough? Neither of my laptops have parallel ports, so I could not hook them up, and the desk machines are rack mounted, so until I can get a machine over here it's difficult to try a faster processor. What *IS* the slowest processor speed that will work cleanly - or is the less than smooth pulse generation a 'facet' of using windows? Given the quality of work that the machine CAN produce, any pattern to the axis movement is likely to affect the surface finish. Ideally I would like to include a 1.2 or 1.5Ghz ITX based processor with each machine but I am wondering if that will work, or if I am stuck with just running DOS and leaving Mach until the G100 or something similar is a cost effective alternative :( I will leave the other problems until I can run things with a faster processor ;) -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- L.S.Caine Electronic Services - Model Engineers Digital Workshop - Treasurer - Firebird Foundation Inc. - www.machsupport.com - Web site Access Yahoo! Groups Links |
