Hardware advice

Awesome advice! Thank you for the guidance - it's exactly what I needed!

OK, so the cute little Atom board is a no-go. I also have a Supermicro board laying around, with a 6-core Opteron on it. I figured it was overkill - but apparently not!

Yes, Pico Systems' boards are parallel port. However, they are not like typical parallel port breakout boards. They are more like Mesa boards - where the processing occurs on the board. Given the fact that Jon is one of the "OGs" of the LinuxCNC world and happens to be local to me, I've debated about whether to go with the standard Mesa board or a board that might come with more personalized service from the engineer who designed it. I don't want to spend a money on stuff that's already outdated, though.

I will reach out to Mesa, and see what they have to say. Their site has a lot of technical information about their boards, but it's difficult for a "newbie" to interpret.

I was hoping you would say that about a touchscreen. That will make the system a lot "cleaner." Having a wireless keyboard tucked away is a great compromise.

Thanks for the advice!

As long as I go with a 1920x1080 monitor, is that all QTDragon needs - or am I missing something?

The existing control panel on this machine is a really nice cast aluminum (?) enclosure. I'd like to just keep it, gut it, and stuff an open frame industrial monitor in it. It will fit somewhere between a 12" and 13" open frame monitor. Do you think that will be big enough - or will I find myself having to get stronger "cheaters" and constantly fat-fingering the QTDragon interface?

gm001 wrote:

Thanks for the advice!

As long as I go with a 1920x1080 monitor, is that all QTDragon needs - or am I missing something?

The existing control panel on this machine is a really nice cast aluminum (?) enclosure. I'd like to just keep it, gut it, and stuff an open frame industrial monitor in it. It will fit somewhere between a 12" and 13" open frame monitor. Do you think that will be big enough - or will I find myself having to get stronger "cheaters" and constantly fat-fingering the QTDragon interface?
Yes 1080p is required for qtdragpn_hd. Mine was 1536pixels and not supported by any of the QTdragon versions.

I don't think you will get a 12-13" 1080p monitor. It was hard enough getting a  15.6in one to replace a nice flush mount one in an enclosure I madebut I shoehorned one in