RE: Bdi4emc-help Digest, Vol 5, Issue 2
Paul, Thanks for the help. The motherboard is an Intel N440BX, it does have an onboard video card which I think is a Cirrus 4680? The processor is 600Mhz P3 and I have 256Mb of ram I increased the period to .00005 and was able to run the default generic.ini file, so I was quite pleased with the progress. When I set the period back to .000022 I froze again so that appears to be the problem. One thing I thought was interesting is that I had installed a vital systems servo card (the 4-Axis version) and using the vital.ini, I was able to run with the period set to .000022 without any problems. I guess this has something to do with the way the card is managing certain processes that would normally be handled by the motherboard? Anyway,I'm off to hook up some motors to see if I can make something move. I'll report back. Thanks Again, Craig ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2006 21:15:09 +0100 From: Paul <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Bdi4emc-help] RE: Bdi4emc-help Digest, Vol 5, Issue 1 To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Hi Craig On Sunday 02 April 2006 19:38, Craigg Gadd wrote:
I'm very new to Linux but managed to successfully install BDI 4.38 a few days ago. I seem to be having trouble launching EMC however. The problem is that the system hangs when TK starts to load. I'm saying this based on what I'm reading on the script window as EMC is loading.
Once the system is hung, I'm unable to recover and must reboot. I'll mention that I don't seem to be having any other problems with the installed applications so I believe the problem relates to EMC and Tk.
This sounds very much like PERIOD being set too low for your computer. This parameter is defined in /usr/local/emc/emc.ini, or generic.ini, depending on which run script you use.. The value is set at a fairly conservative 0.000025 and should work with most 400MHz and faster computers. Even a P266 will run, but performance would be quite sluggish... There are one or two motherboards out there that just can not provide adequate performance due to inherant design problems - Generally, anything that uses shared main memory for onboard video, certain i845/855 chipsets, and Geode processors all have "issues". You could try increasing PERIOD to 0.00005 and see if avoids the freezing. Some additional information about your computer (make/model of motherboard, graphics card, etc) would help.. Regards, Paul. ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Bdi4emc-help mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/bdi4emc-help End of Bdi4emc-help Digest, Vol 5, Issue 2 ******************************************
Hi Craig On Tuesday 04 April 2006 05:20, Craigg Gadd wrote:
Thanks for the help. The motherboard is an Intel N440BX, it does have an onboard video card which I think is a Cirrus 4680? The processor is 600Mhz P3 and I have 256Mb of ram
The 440BX chipset is probably the best one you could ever want for realtime control, and it is likely that the video has a separate 2Meg of static RAM.. Check the BIOS for a Legacy USB option and disable it along with any power management "features".
I increased the period to .00005 and was able to run the default generic.ini file, so I was quite pleased with the progress. When I set the period back to .000022 I froze again so that appears to be the problem.
With a similar system (Celeron 433MHz, 440BX chipset), I have run freqmod at 20uSec and quickstep down to 5uSec - This was done purely for a "what if" exercise and is not recommended as jitter severely affects the stability of the stepper pulse train.
One thing I thought was interesting is that I had installed a vital systems servo card (the 4-Axis version) and using the vital.ini, I was able to run with the period set to .000022 without any problems. I guess this has something to do with the way the card is managing certain processes that would normally be handled by the motherboard?
If you are using a Vital (or any other servo interface card), the period *should* be ignored by the driver. I will look at the relevant sections of the code and see if there is a problem there..
Anyway,I'm off to hook up some motors to see if I can make something move. I'll report back.
With the Vital card, I would suggest setting PERIOD to 0.00005 or 0.0001 and ensure the servo and trajectory cycle times are a multiple of the base period. Regards, Paul.
On Tuesday 04 April 2006 00:20, Craigg Gadd wrote:
Paul,
Thanks for the help. The motherboard is an Intel N440BX, it does have an onboard video card which I think is a Cirrus 4680? The processor is 600Mhz P3 and I have 256Mb of ram
Disable that onboard video, it eats too much bandwidth making use of main memory and emc won't like that at all. Put a cheap ati 9200 clone in it instead. You'll think you just put a supercharger with 20 lbs of boost on that machine. I tried it, with an xp-1400 athlon & half a gig of ram and it was one sick puppy until I put the video card in.
I increased the period to .00005 and was able to run the default generic.ini file, so I was quite pleased with the progress. When I set the period back to .000022 I froze again so that appears to be the problem.
One thing I thought was interesting is that I had installed a vital systems servo card (the 4-Axis version) and using the vital.ini, I was able to run with the period set to .000022 without any problems. I guess this has something to do with the way the card is managing certain processes that would normally be handled by the motherboard?
Anyway,I'm off to hook up some motors to see if I can make something move. I'll report back.
Thanks Again,
Craig
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Message: 2 Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2006 21:15:09 +0100 From: Paul <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Bdi4emc-help] RE: Bdi4emc-help Digest, Vol 5, Issue 1 To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Hi Craig
On Sunday 02 April 2006 19:38, Craigg Gadd wrote:
I'm very new to Linux but managed to successfully install BDI 4.38 a few days ago. I seem to be having trouble launching EMC however. The problem is that the system hangs when TK starts to load. I'm saying this based on what I'm reading on the script window as EMC is loading.
Once the system is hung, I'm unable to recover and must reboot. I'll mention that I don't seem to be having any other problems with the installed applications so I believe the problem relates to EMC and Tk.
This sounds very much like PERIOD being set too low for your computer. This parameter is defined in /usr/local/emc/emc.ini, or generic.ini, depending on
which run script you use.. The value is set at a fairly conservative 0.000025 and should work with most 400MHz and faster computers. Even a P266 will run,
but performance would be quite sluggish...
There are one or two motherboards out there that just can not provide adequate performance due to inherant design problems - Generally, anything that uses shared main memory for onboard video, certain i845/855 chipsets, and Geode processors all have "issues".
You could try increasing PERIOD to 0.00005 and see if avoids the freezing. Some additional information about your computer (make/model of motherboard, graphics card, etc) would help..
Regards, Paul.
------------------------------
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End of Bdi4emc-help Digest, Vol 5, Issue 2 ******************************************
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-- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Hi Gene & Craig On Tuesday 04 April 2006 15:49, Gene Heskett wrote:
The motherboard is an Intel N440BX, it does have an onboard video card which I think is a Cirrus 4680? The processor is 600Mhz P3 and I have 256Mb of ram
Disable that onboard video, it eats too much bandwidth making use of main memory and emc won't like that at all.
I'm going stick my neck out here and suggest that the video chip is in fact a GD5480 - If this is the case, then there is probably a 2MB RAM dedicated to video, so no main memory will not be used. The Intel 440BX does not support such a "feature" natively anyway. Whilst a new graphics card would apen up the possibility of higher resolutions and colour depths, this particular motherboard may lack an AGP slot, and PCI video cards are getting difficult to find. Regards, Paul.
On Tuesday 04 April 2006 11:22, Paul wrote:
Hi Gene & Craig
On Tuesday 04 April 2006 15:49, Gene Heskett wrote:
The motherboard is an Intel N440BX, it does have
an onboard video card which I think is a Cirrus 4680? The processor is 600Mhz P3 and I have 256Mb of ram
Disable that onboard video, it eats too much bandwidth making use of main memory and emc won't like that at all.
I'm going stick my neck out here and suggest that the video chip is in fact a GD5480 - If this is the case, then there is probably a 2MB RAM dedicated to video, so no main memory will not be used. The Intel 440BX does not support such a "feature" natively anyway.
Thats certainly a plus then. And as far as only 2 megs is concerned, I have an old amiga Picasso II card, that has one of the cirrus logic chipsets (5230? 5320?) on it, and 2 megs of self contained ram. And I ran it in (IIRC) 1024x768x24 bit color. And it wasn't noticeably slow at switching screens unless it had to fetch the background for the next screen from disk.
Whilst a new graphics card would apen up the possibility of higher resolutions and colour depths, this particular motherboard may lack an AGP slot, and PCI video cards are getting difficult to find.
Thats odd you should say that Paul.. When I goto circuit city around here, its the AGP cards that are only stocked in onesies. Almost everything is pci, and I'm talking about the $300 gamer cards none of use can even waste time drooling over. There is about 6 to 10 of those on the shelves. The only sub $100 card last week was a PCI card. Everything else was in the buck and a half up territory and nearly 100% PCI. I guess that just proves the old addage of YMMV. :) -- Cheers, Gene People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word 'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
Hi Gene On Wednesday 05 April 2006 04:41, Gene Heskett wrote:
When I goto circuit city around here, its the AGP cards that are only stocked in onesies. Almost everything is pci, and I'm talking about the $300 gamer cards none of use can even waste time drooling over.
Be very carefull when looking at video cards, there is a new kid on the block to replace AGP - It is called PCI Express (PCIe for short). With a projected bandwidth of 8GB/s, it is much, much faster than AGP and makes the old PCI bus look like a snail in comparison. Of course, it goes without saying that PCIe is totally incompatable with PCI slots just as AGP is with ISA. Regards, Paul.
participants (3)
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Craigg Gadd -
Gene Heskett -
Paul