5i25 Deterioration?

We used AMD for all the RTAI work in the past 10 years. The only issues we ever had were BIOS problems or left out features such as "Turn Off Power Management" from some of the motherboard vendors like Biostar, ASRock and MSI.

I don't think we ever came across a Dell or HP AMD system where they let you turn off power management features.

tommylight wrote:

So far the only AMD system that worked properly with Linuxcnc was a HP DC5750 if I remember correctly, it has already done over four years of every day use without a single issue.
It did have issues with serial ATA DVD recorders, readers were OK! This issue was posted on their web site.
AMD has a nasty habit of not caring much about some rules in electronic and PC world, like some of their high end graphic cards drawing way over 75W of allowed power from the PCI-express slot. I had some that drew 9A, or 108W! That tended to render some cheaper mother boards useless!
Can not offer more info as I did not use AMD since that mentioned above.

Appreciate this response, since I hadn't seen anything really specific, like I originally said. Just had been mentioned once or twice, and figured it was worth a shot since I found a decent (2012 (Sandy Bridge?) i3, thanks Moore's Law plateau!) machine so cheap. My machine does have a DVD-RW drive, I don't recall if it's SATA or IDE though.

Bari wrote:

I don't think we ever came across a Dell or HP AMD system where they let you turn off power management features.

Slightly disappointing to hear, but so far (admittedly, not very far, since I only got the whole thing moving again today) I haven't had any issues. If it comes to it I can scratch-assemble a custom PC for the mill using "ideal" components for only about $250, maybe less, so I'm not enormously concerned. The Dell took LinuxCNC fine and is running the 6i25 happily, which is the main thing for now. I haven't tried the PCIe-PCI riser yet, I was fighting with PNCConf for far too long over a ridiculous error- I just hadn't set the X/Y enable outputs on the 7i76 to inverted, so "enabling" was disabling!

Once I've caught up a bit with getting the mill structure upgraded now that the thing is usable manually fly-by-wire, I'll see if the 5i25 works and report back. I'm really hoping it's still fine and it was just the other computer, it'd be great to have a usable backup and/or future machine part.

@Robert Taylor,

I'd appreciate some kind of light in the dark here.
Hmmm. There is Ethercat, that will even work on a old android mobile phone.

Today's it's working on 32 and 64 bit linux system's. Much more powerfull then Mesa.
It's some expensiver, but will work after 25 year's usage in industrie.
It's forbidden to use in nuclair reactor's only.

RobTC wrote:

was fighting with PNCConf for far too long over a ridiculous error- I just hadn't set the X/Y enable outputs on the 7i76 to inverted, so "enabling" was disabling!

CNC'ers around the world collectively waste many thousands of hours each week over this. Its not a PNCCONF issue. Why manufacturers insist on calling the DISABLE signal ENABLE is beyond me. My dawning occurred when I realised the manufacturer's wiring diagram showed it was not connected. Ts only useful if you want to disable steppers on an estop in my view.

Grotius wrote:

@Robert Taylor,

I'd appreciate some kind of light in the dark here.
Hmmm. There is Ethercat, that will even work on a old android mobile phone.

Today's it's working on 32 and 64 bit linux system's. Much more powerfull then Mesa.
It's some expensiver, but will work after 25 year's usage in industrie.
It's forbidden to use in nuclair reactor's only.

I'd never even heard of it, somehow. I'll have to look into it and see if I have any uses for it, sounds intriguing.

rodw wrote:

RobTC wrote:

was fighting with PNCConf for far too long over a ridiculous error- I just hadn't set the X/Y enable outputs on the 7i76 to inverted, so "enabling" was disabling!

CNC'ers around the world collectively waste many thousands of hours each week over this. Its not a PNCCONF issue. Why manufacturers insist on calling the DISABLE signal ENABLE is beyond me. My dawning occurred when I realised the manufacturer's wiring diagram showed it was not connected. Ts only useful if you want to disable steppers on an estop in my view.

I just built a bCNC/grbl laser etcher with TB6600 drivers and already had the mill (closed-loop steppers) functioning with cheap breakouts but ran out of IO. I have no excuse here!

I figured it out when the Arduino I flashed with a simple stepper-tester sketch I wrote years ago would run the drivers at a much higher step rate than I had PNCConf set to (I was 'scoping the whole thing, because I just wasn't getting why everything was hooked up and programmed right but not working!), and then when I reconnected the 7i76 ENA line but left STP and DIR on the Arduino, it started moving only when Axis Test was open but not after I hit enable! Not very smart, but kinda funny in retrospect.

tommylight wrote:

The drives I use ( I mention them offten, Lam Technologies, made in Italy ) have enable for enable ! But it sure can be changed as they are configurable to a very high degree and have their own pulse generators if the need arises to test something.

Not cheap, but seem very nice. That internal pulse generator sounds fantastic, and they seem incredibly compact (the DIN mount SD10s) for the power capacity. Any cooling issues? Always good to have "go-to" names besides Gecko.