PC hardware to run LinxCNC

Hooray, hooray, the D525 turned up today . This morning, in fact. Now I can seriously get down to ordering the rest of the stuff for the computer - plus the remaining parts for the box (frame and rack case), lead wiring, connectors, mounting hardware, and some limit switches. I also managed to finalise the dimensions of the extrusion frame (575 mm H x 190 mm W x 350 mm D), so what I save on the extrusion I an spend on the cutting.

I also dug out the old emails between Steve Sallings at PMDX and me from 2008, in which he gave me advice about a power supply to drive the PMDX-135-8020 (which powers the Gecko 203Vs). I was interested to find that it was he who advised on getting the toroid that I have in hand (a 50-0-50V 5A 500VA unit). I was around at the place where I got it from yesterday, and asked one of the people there what was what with the *three* (not four) secondary leads, so I've got that sorted out in my head. Two of the three wires are red, the third is a black centre-tap. I'll check the output with a multimeter when I've got the thing hooked up to a terminal block - and a 10A fast-blow fuse on the 240V mains switch side of the toroid!

Steve recommended going no higher than 70VDC for the four Geckos, so I'll be testing the black and one of the reds first - which should give me 50 * 1.4 = 70 VAC. The two reds hooked will presumably give me 100 * 1.4 = 140 VAC(!) if I my understanding is correct - twice the recommended voltage (of course). Once I've got the toroid sorted out to my satisfaction I'll plug the in next step in the sequence - the PMDX-135 "power prep" board (a bridge rectifier with five 100 V/4700 muF caps and some onboard logic) - and measure the board's output. Further electronics will then have to wait until I can get the D525 running.

Still to acquire:

4 GB SO-DIMM 204-pin RAM
A Pico PS;
A 2.5 " SSD;
Half-size PCI-e mini wifi card (I have a feeling that this will become useful down the track);
A touchscreen monitor;
Some XLR or similar (locking) connectors for the drives and limit switches (aus RS)
4-core leads (probably from Peter Homann) for drives and limit switches;
19 " rack case;
"item" frames for the rack case.

Query to Andy: in this link (picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/OT4lV-DVGZ...pFm0?feat=directlink) there's several banks of what appear to be relays. Is this in fact what they are?

Cheers,
Alex.

A query to anyone who might be reading this: with the Atom D525MW board, there is a USB header for a horizontal "Intel Z- USB Solid-State Drive or Compatible"; and there are also a couple of SATA II (3.0 GB/s) sockets onboard.

My question is: is it possible to boot the D525 from the SAATA sockets using, e.g., a 2.5" SSD, or for booting do I need to use an Intel "z- or compatible" 4 - 8 GB SSD on the USB header to boot? I don't want to go and order the wrong card!

Cheers,
Alex

andypugh wrote:

AlexN wrote:

My question is: is it possible to boot the D525 from the SAATA sockets

I don't have a D525, but I do have a D510 and a DN2800MT and they both run nicely off of an SSD in the SATA port.

Excellent! Thanks! .

AN

BigJohnT wrote:

I have both 510's and 525's and boot from the SATA hard drive... I don't have and SSD drives.

John

Ah...shall I toss a coin? . Thanks for your input too. I'll have a bit more of a think about this.

AN.

andypugh wrote:

AlexN wrote:

BigJohnT wrote:

I have both 510's and 525's and boot from the SATA hard drive... I don't have and SSD drives.

Ah...shall I toss a coin? . Thanks for your input too. I'll have a bit more of a think about this.

I don't see the problem. I have shown that two similar motherboards boot from SSD on SATA, John has said that the 525 boots from SATA (to be honest, it would be rather useless if they didn't)
SSDs look exactly like mechanical drives to the motherboard. Anything that fits the plug will work.

Hi Andy,

I'm just being a bit cautious. I've rushed into buying hardware before now that wasn't up to scratch for the particular task, e.g., IDE instead of SCSI (many years ago now I should add, however). Or an iMac instead of a Mac Pro recently... The old PowerMac G5 might be eight years old but it is still going strong and I'm about to install one of the PowerPC Ubuntus on it. I doubt that the iMac will be as functional in eight years time. But I digress.

I've found a reasonably-priced 80GB SATA-II MLC SSD on <www.techbuy.com.au > which would allow me to install just about all flavours of linux on it with room to spare ;). I know that I only need the one specific rtai-kernel Ubuntu, though. I'll be using RAM for the tmp files, but a largeish SSD will also allow for some redundancy in any case. And it is an MLC drive.

Cheers,
Alex.

I have 2 high end PCs that have an SSD connected to the SATA port.