LinuxCNC on a HP t5740e thin client ? ?

Chaps,

Has anyone had a play with LinuxCNC on a HP t5740e thin client PC. Apparently they have an Intel Atom N280 1.66GHz processor. You can get an expansion module for the side of them which gives you a paralleled port and a PCI port. I was going to grab one cheap and have a look, but thought i would ask firsts to see if anyone knows if LinuxCNC plays nice with the N280 processor.

Cheers,

Steve

Hi

The N280 is used on quite a few netbooks etc, it certainly works with Ubuntu 10.04.

Most of the HP t5740e that I found on ebay, were quite expensive and only came with 2GB flash drive, which is too small to install to easily.
If you have to buy an expansion module on top of that, you might want to price it against one of the mini ITX Asus or GigaByte boards with parport / PCI in place

As far as latency with Linuxcnc, nothing in the database, if you take the plunge let us know

regards

I picked up a 5740e complete with the parallel port/PCI slot expansion module on eBay. It came with 2GB memory and 4GB flash drive.

I booted 10.4 from a USB drive, (didn't install it), and ran the latency test while running a couple of glxgears etc. Servo thread was 1015112/15437, Base was 47366/25300. Turning off audio, ports, power saving etc in BIOS didn't improve it. The processor appears to have two logical thread, but no option in the BIOS to turn off hyper-threading. I didn't try anything fancy like isolcpus.

Performance may not be good enough for someone running off a parallel port, but I'm currently using a Mesa 5i25 card setup, so it may be good enough for that. If it isn't, it may become an Openelec/XBMC head-end

Cheers, Steve

PS. The parallel port/PCI slot expansion module plugs into a PCI slot in the main unit motherboard via a PCI riser card. If you don't mind plugging a Mesa card directly into the motherboard and the card hanging out of an open case at 90 degrees, you may not need the expansion module.

Just a quick update and correction.

I loaded 2.6.3 onto it, copied my CNC router config files etc over from the other PC, installed the Mesa 5i25 card, and took it for a spin. It works well with no obvios problems other than the handwheel encoder (for jogging and feed override) is now working backwards

Regarding inserting the Mesa card directly into the motherboard, (where the riser fits), the card won't fit because it fouls the network port on the motherboard. Hence, the expansion module, or a standard PCI riser, will be required.

Cheers, Steve