Latency test question

I did a flash drive install of the latest live cd (the one with Ubuntu 10.04) and ran the latency test. The numbers were very good, largely under 5000, however I once double clicked on Firefox (quickly launching two sessions) and the max jitter jumped to over 30,000. I couldn't reproduce that again after that unless I triple clicked on Firefox, prompting Firefox to give me an error that it needed to close one of the windows (or something to that effect). I suppose as long as I don't do something stupid like that while the machine is running I'm likely okay?

PC: MSI K8N NEO3 MB
AMD ATHLON64 3000+ PROCESSOR
1.5GB RAM

Machine: taig 2019CR
xylotex drive board
1/8 microstepping (IIRC)
*looking for over 30 ipm rapids (I could go up to 60 with turbocnc, but 30 was very reliable)
Trying to revive a milling machine that has gathered dust for several years.

Hi

You really need to load the computer with real - world type events. The highest loads on the system when running Linuxcnc are things like graphics rendering, particularly openGL, disk read / writes etc.

Thus the advice is running several instances of glxgears, move windows around forcing re-paints and big file transfers and deletes.

The advice also says 'surf the net', but I too have had large adverse reactions in jitter to launching Firefox, which is becoming something of a bloated juggernaut.
Trying to launch 2 instances at once and then a third could lock up any system. Firefox has completely locked my home computer X Server forcing crash re-boots on several occasions.
It is not something I would never do in reality and certainly not during a machining run.

If you really must surf the net, consider installing iceweasel or some other light browser.

The numbers were very good, largely under 5000

It is not the average that matters it is the spikes
If you can do the preceding for several hours, with good max jitter ( I would expect 10000 to 20000 at least using 10.04) it should be OK

It may be better however under 8.04 as previously advised

regards

Thanks, Arceye. I'll give that a try. This machine may only be for trying out emc anyway. If I like EMC enough I'm not against buying the perfect pc to run it.

Don't give up on this one yet.

If it will run a 5K jitter for any period of time with 10.04 it may well have good potential

regards