Recommended hardware

Hi!

Is there any commercial small form factor PC tested and recommended for emc2?
I saw somebody was trying Dell OptiPlex models.
What keyboards and touchpads for industrial use (very dusty) work fine?
What SSD's are recommended? (Samsung Pro 850 or similar?)

The PCs don't need to be new models, just available ones!

Also:
What are the additional cards recommended? (Parallel cards, Mesa, etc.?)

Is touchscreen support available and working?

I came to see if Raspberry has good reviews, but I see that PC's are still the better option.

I have 3 emc2 systems (already 5 years old) running on machines with Ubuntu 8.04, and I want to update the hardware.

Thanks in advance!

I find that off lease HP 8300 USDTs are nice for Ethernet connected cards and can manage a 4 KHz servo thread over Ethernet if you disable the Intel spyware (AMT).

I know that the J1900 based Gigabyte Brix is also ok for Ethernet. Probably newer mini PCs are ok also but i don't have personal experience with them.

If you go USFF, I would look for one with a dual NIC card so you had one for your ethernet Mesa card and one for your network. You can get J1900 ones from Alibaba/AliExpress.

I can confirm the J1900 and N3160 Gigabyte Brix PC's work fine. I have a J1900 on my LinuxCNC machine and writing this on a N3160. Just you can't use the internal wifi card. You need a USB wifi dongle.

Thanks to anyone who gave e suggestions.

IS this one of the units you recommended:
articulo.mercadolibre.com.mx/MLM-6001432...42ghz-_JM?quantity=1

As I see, there is has a mini PCI Express slot. I would have to use it for a parallel card. (What models would fit and work?)

Yes, thats what I use but with a Mesa Ethernet card. I suspect you may run into troubles trying to install a parallel port but you can probably get an adapter cable to break out the tiny expansion card inside to a full size one. I've got no experience with parallel ports and LInuxCNC.

Personally, If I was to run a parallel port, I'd look at the other recommendations.

@PCW,

if you disable the Intel spyware (AMT).

Hmm never heard about this one. How much lower is the speed when AMT is enabled on ethernet?
Pcw, concider to design a ethercat board. That would be nice, in manhatten style has my prefix...
From what i see now is that it is the fastest protocol ever. If mesa spend some time in this protocol and build some hardware
around this, they would have the fastest i/o product on earth. I bet for sure.

Maximum servo rate with AMT enabled on a HP8300 is about ( Preempt-RT 4.18 kernel)
is about 1 KHz. This increases to about 4 KHz with AMT disabled

Not terribly interested in Ethercat since AFAIK its not possible to make a hardware slave device with open source firmware.

I know there has been a lot of discussion about licenses with this product. However:

Reviewing the Slave (SOEM) License at open Ethercat Society, I can't see there are any restrictions preventing using it for opensource projects. In fact its specifically allowed.
github.com/OpenEtherCATsociety/SOES/blob/master/LICENSE

Its just that if you make a work based on this software, you don't have to publish the derived wotk as open source

SOES is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free
Software Foundation.

SOES is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
for more details.

As a special exception, if other files instantiate templates or use macros
or inline functions from this file, or you compile this file and link it
with other works to produce a work based on this file, this file does not
by itself cause the resulting work to be covered by the GNU General Public
License. However the source code for this file must still be made available
in accordance with section (3) of the GNU General Public License.

This exception does not invalidate any other reasons why a work based on
this file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.

To me this is designed to protect companies like Mesa from being forced to publish their IP as open source unless they want to.

It seems the default position of the Open Source movement is that becasue there is a restriction in the license it can't be included into the LinuxCNC core but in my view and I quote "This exception does not invalidate any other reasons why a work based on
this file might be covered by the GNU General Public License". In other words if you want to GPL a derived work, you can.

It does seem that the SOES now supports some devices like the LAN9252 that have data sheets that are not under NDA protection. We made a Ethercat device a couple years ago using a ET1100 that at the time had quite restrictive licenses, and truly dreadful documentation.