New User with Questions – Experience with Linux, but not CNC

Good Afternoon,

I’m a fairly experienced Linux user, but I have almost no experience with CNC at all.

1. Does LinuxCNC have support for devices driven via serial port? If so, what/where is it? There’s tons of documentation for parallel, but all I can find for serial is serport, which is documentation sparse.

2. Assuming the device in use is configured via one of the wizards, how much fiddling is required to get it in working order, and does any of the fiddling pose any risk to the device?

3. Does LinuxCNC support the LPC bus included on most (older) motherboards or are daughter cards required?

Thanks.

#1 for driving axes - no other stuff like VFDs yes
#2 Hard to answer because it depends on what you are trying to do and your experience.
If it's a basic parallel port, xyz machine probably not much.
Mesa card xyz machine probably a little
Others probably quite a bit.

#3 I doubt it - I had to look it up to see what it was. - not that you couldn't code a driver for it.
Is there a good reason to use this LPC port? can't use a parallel port?

Chris M

i read that LPC again - it seems thats a bus - that can connect to among other things a parallel port.
maybe it would work then.
I'm sure someone who actually knows will add a comment.

Chris M

I'm going to assume Low Pin Count for the sake of my answer.
I was under the impression the LPC bus was (and still is) intended for use by so called "Super IO" chips (Parallel port, fdd and serial, keyboard & mouse) and the mapping was done via the Southbridge. Bascially a replacement for ISA peripherals.
It appears no connector has been defined and the only "add-in" cards are Trusted Platform Module. Which could be proprietary to each system (I dunno only speculating).

Even if you could breakout the signals, or there was a usable connector a custom FPGA would be needed to implement custom hardware....and if you had the means & knowledge to do that a driver would be no issue.

To use std devices connected to the LPC bus nothing special is required........but connecting a custom device would be a whole different kettle of fish. Whether what if any southbridge is able to map custom devices at a particular address would require going through data sheets.

Is the kind of info you were after ?

I'll say this is my basic understanding of it and one or two speculations re the southbridge and connector thrown in.