network sharing with LinuxCNC

I see that Mesa uses Xilinx FPGAs. My guys designed the first Altera FPGA the 81188, and we went on and built the 10K100. So you see I can't use anything that has a Xilinx FPGA it's against my religion :dry:

The Xeon processor performance can be found here: Xeon The /proc/cpuinfo reveals lot of detail but nothing useful to further identify the CPU.

The Beagle Board approach seems cheap and good. It would allow me to use Linux Mint 20 and a much more modern CPU.

The command I suggested reveals everything to identify the cpu.
The Beagle Bone solution actually runs a fork of Linuxcnc called Machine Kit.
Core 2 Duos are only designed for Single Processor Systems.
The actual Intel alpha numeric code is contained in /proc/cpuinfo, that’s why I asked about the output.
To go for a more modern processor, you have a couple of options. Just note that latest and greatest doesn’t always mean best option for running Linuxcnc. Your best bet would be to search the forums and see what Tommy recommends. Tommy is the guru when it comes to that.
The BBB solution is not for the faint of heart. It requires acquiring a breakout board to translate 3.3v to 5v, some say the performance of the GPU isn’t the best and it has issues with large gcode files. The latest images require the use of a Remote Desktop as the X portion has been stripped out.

IMHO an I5 to I7 of about any generation coupled with a Mesa FPGA card is a solid solution. If you opt for 7i92 you can plug that into your existing Parallel Port BOB. With the 7i92 using an Ethernet port it is good until they stop building PCs with Ethernet ports.
But if your current system works keep with that.

I'm just not a fan of running Linux on small boards. I like the down and dirty of Arduino because there is no OS just a small CPU running in a loop and some naked I/O.

The FPGA solution certainly gets down to the bare metal hardware level but the speed of an FPGA is wasted sending commands to a stepper driver and FPGAs don't naturally buffer data the way a CPU can. A $20 Arduino is hard to beat and I just love the way GRBL is written -- the code is a joy to read.

You are right, the current set up works so I will keep with that until the ancient Dell box dies.

The FPGA solution certainly gets down to the bare metal hardware level but the
speed of an FPGA is wasted sending commands to a stepper driver

We do not use FPGAs so much for speed (but it's there when needed), but for flexibility.
say if you need 7 encoder counters, a BISS interface, and a XY2-100 galvanometer
interface, its all possible. FPGAs also have the advantage that the peripherals can be tailored
to LinuxCNCs requirements. In addition porting to newer hardware is trivial since the register
model does not change.

FPGAs don't naturally buffer data the way a CPU can

LinuxCNC depends on unbuffered hardware because the locus of control is
on the host CPU. Buffered systems Like Mach and GRBL are fine until you
try to do something fancy in real time (say plasma torch height control) Then
you typically need external hardware add-ons

Just to be "That Guy"....

Basically FPGA's naturally do nuffin.

Back onto the file sharing.... another approach is to run a software version management system, commit the code on the generating computer, then pull the code onto the Linux cnc computer. This will work with Linux, pc and Mac and has the added benefit you can keep all the tweaks you have done to program and roll back if needed. Works great for the configuration files too. I use svn, just because it was there at the time. Nowadays probably git. There are gui for them too, if that is your thing. You will need to host it on an always on machine but it uses a Web server to provide the data, so direct file sharing is not needed.