Porting to SAM3X8E

Todd wrote:

I spend far more time pounding my head on the desk trying in vain to fix MS Windows problems than I do with Linux. At least with Linux I can usually google up a solution to most of my problems.

hi Todd
Exactly why I am still on Win7Pro - Upgrading is a nightmare, updates are also switched off because they normally fix 1 problem and create another 2 - I am NOT a Windows fan but it works so ?I use it

tommylight wrote:

Installing Linux and having EVERYTHING working (in 90% of cases) takes 20 minutes max.
Installing windows and having EVERYTHING working (in 90% of cases) 8 to 20 HOURS.
That is absolutely and unequivocally true, so before anyone starts a OS war here, go and test that.
The time of Linux requiring experts to set it up are long gone. I started using computers when ZX81 and later ZX Spectrum came out.

Download Linux Mint Mate edition 17.2 or 17.3, everything just works, no trouble, no terminal, nothing.

Hi Tommy
Not a big windows fan - it SUCKS but I got it to work so why change?
My first "PC" was a ZX79 - looking back life was SOOO much easier then ;>}

PCW wrote:

The other really nice thing about Linux is that you can swap hard drives with installed
Linux systems freely between different PCs, try that with windows

Hi PWC
I have - NO FURTHER COMMENT as they do not like cursing and swearing on this forum

OK guys, time to wrap it up I think.
Tommy, I'll give Mint a go - maybe I'll come right.
To all who added comments, thank you.
The reason I started this thread was that I was hoping that someone had already ported LinuxCNC to the SAM3X8E family of MCU's
Obviously no-one has but that is OK - all it means is that I will have to see if I can do it myself.
What I am trying to do is basically what they have done with the UNO, control a CNC setup basically from any computer that can drip feed the g-code as required.
The difference is that my "CNC SETUP" is a 5 axis arm with a "not your typical" design.
Essentially this design has all the driving motors (think of them as servos) in the base and the biggest problem is that if you change the angle of one joint, all the joints further up the arm change too.
So to prevent this, instead of having the positional sensors on the "servo" motor, they will be on the joints (with step up gears so that the joint angle change can be detected).
This will give me the "servo" type feedback so that adjustments can be done to keep the end effector where it should be.
First I have a "little" bit of code to sort out - Kinematics is NOT an easy concept to tame.
AND the SAM3X8E is not the worlds most powerful processor with an unlimited lump of memory.
Once again people, thanks.

tommylight wrote:

I was referring to this:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX81
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum
and Commodore 16 and 64
and Atari 520 stfm
and amiga
and 8088 XT
and the list is reallyyyyyyy long

Hi Tommy
I know, I had its older brother - that is what started me getting into computers.
I think we both traveled the same route mostly.
I was not trying to be nasty or anything in my reply - sorry if it sounded like it.
Only yours led you to Linux and mine to Web back end development which I am no longer doing since I retired.
Now it is time to get my robot arm idea (dating back to 2002) moving forward.

Mad wrote:

Thanks rodw
I will definitely have a look at TinyG.

Its not LinuxCNC that I have a problem with, its Linux itself.

But I think what you are missing is that LinuxCNC comes as a complete Linux Distribution that installs the Linux OS, LinuxCNC and a nice graphical user interface.

Then it has nice GUI wizards to configure it. So all you need to learn is how to edit a text file from within the GUI if your config needs tweaking. I doubt you'd need to open a cmd line window

I'm similar to Tommylight, I started with PC's before MSDOS existed and way before GUI's like Windows came out. I use Windows daily but every time I've played with Linux, I have been amazed at how seamless the install is. I've still not forgiven Microsoft for rendering my $5,000 scanner useless with the release of Windows 10.

Frankly, I'm really over Windows and a big fan of cloudbased systems where everything happens in a browser. The only thing I do at work is edit photos in the OS. The rest is in the cloud. Chromebooks are a big sleeper.

tommylight wrote:

No worries, i just can not recall a ZX79 existing, but i do remember the Mephisto as it had 4MB of ram at the time of 64 and 128KB computers.
That was THE time to into computers, we easily knew everything going on inside. Remember "poke" and "peek" ? Even game cheating required knowledge, programming in assembly was king.
On a side note, i have already looked at all available options as far as arduino et al goes, also raspberry PI and similar, but no joy, they either lack real time or suffer from bad latency as they have implemented everything under the sun to preserve power, so processors go to sleep at will and change working frequencies etc.
As Andy mentions often here in this forum, small form factor PC or a mini ITX board is the best solution. There are a lot of perfectly good PC's that cost lees than a R-PI, so i do not even bother any more, i buy mostly DELL Optiplex series with core2duo for 60 to 80 euro a piece and move on. I have yet to see one fail.
Regards

I think it must have been a "re-brand" - I am in South Africa and back then there were all sorts of sanctions and stuff because of apartheid.
There was a lot of re-branding being done to get around the sanctions - every country in the world was still sending us stuff in disguise to keep the anti-apartheid crowd off their backs.
Those were bad times....

Poke and peek - those were good times - my machine had a whole 1k of ram - later I upgraded to a whopping 4k at great expense !!!!!
And it was a good grounding - taught me to plan my program and code efficiently.
Also taught me some bad habits - GOTO for example, but you had to use them because there were no while, case etc language constructs so we had no choice.
Took me a while to forget the goto which 9 times out of 10 got you in the cr@p - BASIC was very basic back then.

I am constantly amazed at where we are today compared to the "peek" and "poke" era.
And we all still got it right WITHOUT the web....
Go well there