SFF/USFF PCs with a Mesa 7i76E

Hi

Anybody with 7i76E experience; are there any do's/dont's or advice as to PCs that'll work well with the 7i76E?

I'm happily looking for USFF now I'm using the Ethernet board (ie no PCI slots needed), but the question is whether the single motherboard Ethernet port that SFF and USFF machines have will be suitable or if I need to fit a better quality PCI/PCIe Ethernet card into the host PC?

And how small/embedded a PC can I go with the 7i76E reliably? Have been given some advice on another thread as to some CPUs, but asking this in a more global way.

I don't really want to buy new machines (as I need quite a few for a lot of LinuxCNC installs I'm doing), so something like a used Dell Optiplex 780 is attractive, given they're available at £50-80 each.

I would love to use a touchscreen panel mounted PC or industrial PC, but they all seem to be embedded CPU (atom etc) and the Intel based ones are normally super-super expensive (£1500-4000 new and even used). The only cheap option seems to be a USFF with a nice quality touchscreen (£200-300 total).

So, in short, running 7i76E... where possible will use separate USB Ethernet for the "admin" network and the motherboard Ethernet for the 7i76E (using industrial Ethernet switches or direct patch cable).

Suggestions?

Thanks!

I have the 7i76e running happily on a J1900 Gigabyte Brix without the onboard wifi as it killed latency (I'm using a USB wifi dongle). There are some dual NIC ones out there. PCW from Mesa has tested and recommended a Zotec J1900 dual NIC USFF.

Also there are some dual NIC ones on aliexpress. If I started again, I would try one of those as the Zotec was not available in Australia.

Oh and make sure you install Linux Mint as lack of driver support will drive you crazy but now there is cncnoob's superb tutorial on this forum to show the way.

Hi Rod

I'm struggling to find many J1900 by Zotec or indeed anybody else. Any other USFF chipsets worth looking at? Seeing lots of Celeron N3150, N3700, N2807 Bay Trail, N2930 Bag Trail at the £150-180 price points.

Jetway seem quite nice - rugged fanless enclosures, good combos of models with dual gigabit, plus they're DIN rail mountable, so can mount these in control cabinets. Even the Intel NUC look interesting enough.

(I prefer to start with very minimal Debian builds and work up from there... will avoid Mint at all costs

The N3150 will be OK. I also have used a N3160 and it worked. The N3150 and N3160 are updates of the J1900. I might have been wrong about the Zotec. I think it was probably a N3150 when I think back.

Feel free to try Debian, I did. But I found a number of driver issues which prompted me to move to Mint which resolved them all. My experience was one of the factors that prompted cncnoob to write his Mint tutorial.

Remember, you will need to compile the preemptive kernel on this hardware regardless of what OS you use. MInt is so much more refined than Debian in my experience.

The Jetway JBC323 seems to fit the bill... Has dual NIC, up to 8GB, fits a 2.5" SSD, no DVI (so will need an adaptor), has lots of USB and serial ports, and can be wall and DIN rail mounted. Seems a good option.

The next step up are 1047U Celerons, but struggling to find dual NIC of those.

I can get the Jetway easily (via Mini-ITX.com) at £185... plus RAM from £22.

Sounds a winner so far. Need to figure out best way of fitting them (ie inside the control cabinet or on separate open panel at rear of machines or even back mounted on the displays)...

I think if you are going to use a 7i76e, you should use a separate PC so I would get one that is complete.

As I said, I'd get one of these which I was quoted about USD $100 for
www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2017-Linu...0.7724838.0.0.64bibu

These look very similar to those sold prebuilt with CommandCNC who use LinuxCNC.

Also my Brix can be mounted to the back of a monitor as it comes with the bracket.