Updating 11 year old system

Hello! My dad purchased a Sherline 5400 with CNC about 11 years ago and never opened it. I had him give it to me to get setup and it is working. However I want to use modern software like Fusion 360 to model and toolpath. The gcode fusion generated was rejected by the ancient EMC software both due to colons being used and by at least one G code it didn't recognize. So it seems that the right answer is to upgrade to the latest linuxcnc version. This is not a simple task though, as the drive in the computer is cd-rom and the latest image is DVD sized at 1.1GB. USB CD-ROM Boot did not work for me, nor did USB HDD from a usb stick with the linuxcnc image. The computer only has a PATA connection and the DVD Drive I have is SATA. Since the bios only mentions CD-Rom, DVD-Rom boot may not work.

I have a PATA to SATA conversion board on the way to see if that will solve this.

If that doesn't work, I am thinking I should try to upgrade the EMC software as far as it will go.

I am also interested in any history over this 11 years someone may have on how g-code language or support has evolved.


Thanks for your thoughts!

Vince

Thanks for the reply!

So far I see these codes reported as not good. There could be more:
G71
M26
and H0 was reported to be an H word with no G43

Also, semi colon is not supported as a comment, only parenthesis seem to be.

I really appreciate you including the update commands you use. I will do that soon and try again.

What CAD/CAM software are you using to create g-code that is working on your older system?

Thanks,

Vince

You can modify your Fusion360 post fairly easily if you're at all familiar with JavaScript. The Sherlines require extremely dumbed down posts to run smooth. There are LinuxCNC posts built in, but I used the Generic Fanuc post (since its what I'm most familiar with) and killed whatever EMC2 didn't like in the post configuration. Most of what I modified was personal preference though.

I just updated my 11 year old system as well. I had to use an external usb dvd drive to do it. There was an option to boot an external usb device in the BIOS. I am having an issue with the Shurline ini files running the stepper motors. forum.linuxcnc.org/9-installing-linuxcnc...rallel-communication

Through much trial and error, I have upgraded to a much newer i5 processor/motherboard while retaining the original case, power supply and axis control hardware. I needed to buy a PCIE Parallel port card (went with SYBA SD-PEX10005 PCI-Express Card 1x Parallel Port, MCS9900 Chipset). And my system is reading the files almost perfectly now. I'll start another topic about the current issue.

The longer version of the story in case it helps anyone...

My goals were to be able to use fusion 360 as a modern CAD/CAM software so I can run the gcode files through the CNC computer, and have a new enough CNC system that it can easily talk to the network to get the files. I was having a problem with codes and comment characters not being recognized by EMC (v1 I think or early v2). My thought was that running a newer version of linuxcnc would more closely support whatever fusion 360 would generate. Perhaps this goal would be met by using the correct post processor. I found this post processor for my Sherline 5400 and it is almost perfect:
gist.github.com/robanonymous/47bba09822a43e803aff410f49b30213

The super old system I started with only had a cd-rom drive, and linuxcnc stopped distributing Live CD-ROM images at Ubuntu 10.04. That was still much newer than I had, so I thought I would try it. My friends external USB CD/DVD Drive booted it, but it literally took 1.5 hours to get the desktop fully loaded, and then another 10 minutes to start linux CNC, only to have it error.

Next I tried an internal DVD drive I had, but it is sata, and the board only had pata connections. So I got a $6 converter. No luck booting the image. So time for a board upgrade.

A friend gave me a micro ATX board, i5, ram, and 4TB drive he had in a media server. I grabbed the latest linuxcnc v2.7, feeling confident this board will support it, however it is still pretty old Debian/wheezy and the drive seems to have been too big. So I put a smaller drive in since 4TB was way more than is needed.

Pulled pretty much everything out of the case to get all the new stuff installed. The 4 axis driver hardware has hard-wired power in to the power supply, so I didn't want to even consider replacing it if I could help it.

I booted up the DVD live image and installed the real time kernel and linuxcnc quite easily. Then selected the Sherline Inch config, installed the parallel port card, watched a youtube video showing how to get the out and in addresses for it, and added that config to the .hal file. And there were many days in there wondering if I had made a horrible mistake trying to replace the board...

Side note, I ordered this PCIE Parallal port card first, and after no controls seemed to be reaching my servos, I found information online that this particular chipset did not work with linuxcnc. "Syba 1 Port DB25 Parallel PCIe x1 Controller Card Components Other SI-PEX10010 Green". I had the same problem the the next card I ordered, but after setting the parallel port out address in the correct place, it worked. And perhaps this is all it would have taken to get the other one to work.

At this point I can generate g-code that works if I remove the T1 M6 line it adds to change tool. I'll post about that in another topic if I can't solve it.

Thanks for the help!

Vince

A 4TB drive shouldn't be a problem.

I've used one that size with both the Linuxcnc Wheezy hybrid ISO, and the older Ubuntu 10.04. The drive was an old used drive pulled out of a network server by our IT guy.

Although I agree one that big is rather a waste just for a cnc Linuxcnc control.