help understanding the difference ...

PCW>

Yes, thats the plan, with a little help from these backbone outputs...

I'm still throwing around the idea of PAYING someone to review and help me understand any mistakes or better methods in my code once I'm done with a first attempt.

I have a time pressure that'll come into play sooner or later, so it'd be worth it.

Maybe the forums will be forthcoming anyway - and it does go against the grain of the open source ethos though huh ?

Maybe I'd make a donation to EMC instead ?

Well you can have both. make a config with pncconf so you have a working configuration to use.
Then either use that as a base to modify to suit or
start a 'clean slate' config on your own.

But just starting to compare trhe two and ask questions has started you on the path of knowledge.

Cheers
Chris M

What was the question?

pretty much: help me

which everyone has done

but since you ask...

How is a beginner meant to know which demo configs are new and which are old ?

Easy to say ... Harder to do.

Remember this is from the perspective of a beginner - something you perhaps no longer have ?

I went straight to the appropriate demo, which was suggested by a IRC user - 5i22Big - at the time the thought was I'd be stupid to choose anything else. I'm not so sure, would your advice be "you could learn lots from figuring out which of the demo configs are old and which are new" ?

You touch upon another point I make here - info has to be gleaned from many places before you have the knowledge to try anything, but you don't know when you've read it all. By downloading the .pdf's I thought I was covered - but it was only yesterday that I was linked (by yourself I think?) a page which had a bunch of stuff new to me (a list of all the hal commands and details a link away).

I don't want to sound ungrateful it's just that I feel a little defence when I bring these points up ?

Every time I comment here I put my future self in a position that should try to write another manual for people like me

"Learning how to be pedantic and contradictory about HAL before you even learn it"

or maybe:

"How to tune your forum Karma to negative values"

Hello 1:1,

Just throwing my 10 cents in. As a newbie to EMC, I fully understand how you feel. I have a degree in electronics, have been a machinists for 20 years, and have been maintaining my cnc machines at work for the last 10 years. 1 thing I DO understand is how things need to work. Having said this, up until about 2 months ago, I was fully ready and able to develop my own controller for my perticular custom built machine. This is because it felt easier then being able to figure this stuff out.

Maybe you ask yourself at this point, what changed my mind? simple answer is THIS FORUM and the folks here, Mostly the folks. I have read almost every post in every thread and followed all the links, and I now feel like I understand the basic stepconf created set of files. So there is A LOOONNNGGG way to go, but I see the power available and I have found the source of answers. Let me add I had tried IRC, but just wasn't getting it from there.

The biggest thing I have seen here is how every question is persued by people trying to help the OP get the info they are looking for. I read a thread where BigJohn tirelessly answered the same question 5 times trying to re-word it because the OP just wasn't following. At that point Andy jumped in and tried. I think this happened in less then a day of actual elasped time.

The bottom line is yes - I agree there is some dis jointedness in the docs - welcome to open source? But for me, this forum is the glue. Ask questions - no matter how small you think it is, it will be answered happily. There seems to be just a few fundumental things that once they "click" the rest seems way less complicated.

Oh, 1 more thing - I have been reading tech manuals, programming manuals, and datasheets for years. None of them are as hard to understand as this. But thanks to John, Andy, PCW and a few others, this is not that bad.

John T (in particular) and others have done a ton of work adding and re-writing the docs.
Often when someone asks a clarification of the docs John T will find the answer and change the docs immediately.
First I say thank you sooo much way to give back to EMC!
That being said I think a discussion of the organization of and some of the content of the docs is never a bad thing.
I know that as one learns more and more of how EMC works we assume (or really just forget to ask ) that others have that same basic knowledge

As a small time developer I find the PDF not very handy and different from the HTML. I liked the HTML docs better they seemed divided better.
(for 2.5 this is changing and unfortunately for me the HTML will look like the PDF)
(this is all IMHO)
The HAL manual should just be basic using of HAL, how to make signals connect to pins read them with halmeter and such
maybe a small example of loading the parport and manually reading and writing to it.
emphasis on using HAL to debug HAL file problems and keep it short. I would think after a while you wouldn't need it any more.
(maybe just as a reference for how to use HALscope etc)

The integrators manual should contain the HAL drivers , EMC connections (motion pins etc) ,Realtime components, HALUI, GLADE VCP, PYVCP
specific HAL connections to the GUI's etc
Every thing related to connecting HAL components together
This is the one most everyone would use all the time when building or upgrading

The user's manual of course is all about using EMC to machine stuff. Lots about how to use specific GUI's etc.
Almost nothing about HAL

Getting started is pretty much about right though if someone wrote about the difference between steppers and servos.
The difference between hardware steppers vrs software steppers (these topics are talked a lot of )
a run down / capabilities of the most popular hardware parport, ,Mesa, and Pico
That would help a lot for further discussion.

the bottom line is (again IMHO) all the info is there it's just hard to find it in a logical order of when you need it as a noob.

Chris M

And boy can anyone extend the timeout for posting messages? That is so annoying that you can't get your l o n g message back if you timeout.