General LinuxCnc Program Questions

Hello the forum. I am new to the group, registered quite a while ago, but just now posting.

It was maybe a year ago I found at the local metal scape yard a gantry style engraving machine, maybe 11x14 bed size. Very solid build, probably US made, maybe 20 years old? All the electronics had be stripped out! That is probably a good thing. Most all of the structure is castings. Considering using linuxcnc to run it through a single board x86 quad with enough GPIO pins.

Seems a lot of the computer used for Linux are x86 style with 2 or more cores. Is linuxcnc written to make use of the multiple cores? I am sure it has multiple threads, but not certain if it can use multiple cores concurrently.

How much ram does a typical installation require.

Questions about motion limits but will start another thread.

Stan

The computer choice goes mostly down to good latency with enough cpu power left over to run the non-realtime programs - which really means the CNC screen response.

There are recommended motherboards, but if you have some old computers laying around you might as well just test them.

Chris M

Hello Chris, thanks for the response.