Testers Needed for New RTAI Packages

Thank you for some solid advice.

BeagleBrainz wrote:

After reading some on the Mint forums, the particular desk top environment seems to be so intertwined in the distro it's a pain to change.

yes, mint is definitely for the desktop (here's looking at you unity) and i would probably start with ubuntu server because that is what i am most familiar with.

BeagleBrainz wrote:

The way I look at it if you need more "umpf" ditch the Parallel Port and go with something like a 7i92 that can plug into an existing Parallel Port setup or bit the bullet and go the whole hog with a 7i76e.

definitely! i have realized after my unfortunate discovery that PCIe parallel ports do not work with linux (i have more parallel ports than richard branson has private islands. i wonder if he's open to a trade...) that i am really beating a dead horse here. that is why i was pinning my hopes on rtai to keep my machines alive. i fell into the trap of parallel is such an archaic technology that while almost all modern motherboards still come with ps2 ports, none come with a parallel port any more and even fewer are coming with pci ports, its all pcie. parallel does not work with pcie, so your are relegated to running antiques. so now you are stuck trying to find a working combination of ram, does it support sata, can you boot from usb, do i still have a working optical drive, hell, can i even actually burn a cd/dvd anymore? makes me wanna drag my c64 or coco2 out to the garage and use them instead.

so anyway, rtai was pretty much my last stop on the train to mesa. my only problem is of course finances. i would need them 4x over and since i am self employed, i already live on a tight margin and if my business survives this corona virus malarky, then i will begin investing in them. im going to go 5/6i25-7i76. probably 6i25 because it is getting harder to find good boards with pci slots. might as well ask for one with isa.

BeagleBrainz wrote:

if you want to go kiosk mode, do it and then do a write up, but I'm just trying to put something back in, and the best way I feel is appealing to a larger audience.
I really take my hat of to those that have been brave enough to start a thread regarding installing on another Distro, and answering questions that can be found out by a 1 minute google search or reading the thread from start to finish.
I don't understand why it's so hard to downlad packages xyz & c install said packages & reboot.

i would love more than anything have something to give back to this community, but i am not at that level yet. dont get me wrong, i might be a noob in this arena, but until a few years ago, i worked as a developer and have some pretty serious kung fu. the problem is that my areas of expertise are not in ANY way related to this except for my ability to pick up new languages pretty quickly and read unfamiliar code. because of my field, i am pretty familiar with linux and am totally comfortable with command line and actually sometimes prefer it. the downside is, while i know servers inside and out, i have always been a nix USER. the esoterica of things like the kernel are beyond my brand of voodoo (i am in AWE of you andy!).

i wish it was a easy as just install xyz & c. its the 'c' that gets you every time because it is some obscure package that is not really an actual dependency, but x wont run right without it, and if you try and install c-2342.3.abc.deb rather c-2343.2.abc.deb which is hosted on some obscure russian repo that is only up on wednesdays and in cyrillic, you are totally hosed. oh and did i mention that there is zero documentation as well? but of course you should have known that noob, and now you have wipe and reinstall from the ground up...

but seriously, thank you rob for your advice, answers, an most importantly the time you give to this. that is why i love this forum so much. people like you, andy, jt, tommy, and phil, just to name a few, treat everyone with patience and actually answer questions fully and logically. i know i am just a hobbyist and lack some of the terminology, but i am learning, which makes me more ambitious and my questions more stupid which makes me realize how little i actally know. i think its just enough to be dangerous! usually i just forum stalk because i really hate the elitism you get when you post on some of these forums. one time i asked if there was a touch friendly desktop or theme for debian on a nameless forum and you would have thought that i wore a klan hood to a southern baptist church! sheesh it was just a simple question and i was tarred and feathered out of town. so thank you all for tolerating me!

oddwick wrote:

i have realized after my unfortunate discovery that PCIe parallel ports do not work with linux

I'm currently using this port to do software stepping on a machine.
www.newegg.com/p/0J2-000D-00023?item=9SI...uvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

It may not work perfectly, but it works good enough for what I'm doing. It's problem is that the internal pull ups for the inputs don't work in Linux (but they do with Windows.) However it still works if the breakout board supplies the pull up voltage.

The Asrock J3355 ITX boards have a parallel port

andypugh wrote:

Todd wrote:

www.newegg.com/p/0J2-000D-00023?item=9SI...uvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Though that is getting perilously close to the price of a Mesa 6i25 ($109)

Agreed, if this had been driving ordinary stepper drive drives, I would have just used one of those. In this case I was doing something a little funky with it so using the software stepgen was simpler. (I didn't think I could easily do 4 phase half stepping with the Mesa card.)

I didn't say it couldn't be done. Just that it was simpler with the parallel port. And the performance level of this machine is well within software stepping abilities.

andypugh wrote:

That's not true, it is easy to find boards with parallel ports, even now.
www.mini-itx.com/store/category?type=mot...&sortby=price&page=1
Or with a header on the board needing only an adaptor.
www.mini-itx.com/store/category?type=mot...&sortby=price&page=1

i have found some, but i have been shy about using an embedded board, which is what i would really love. i got my hands on a pair of complete systems that were used for portable medical stations and were itx and with the case and everything came in around 17cm2 and they were $50us each. they would have been ideal, but the problem was that they were itx intel boards (i cant remember the model no right off the top of my head) with i3 processors, but when i got them all hooked up, the machines spazzed out and that is when i found that the parport was 3v3 instead of 5 and i still can't find any reference to the voltages in the datasheets. the same goes for most boards and cards. i was picking mine by reading forum posts with people who had some success.

another problem is that my main machine runs dual parports, and i dont know how that would work on a itx board. now with a mesa i should be fine i think. maybe? also, how do those celerons perform? that was another reason that i stayed away because the only ones i have ever used have been underwhelming. always thought that it wasnt really intels best effort.

andypugh wrote:

I think this one stands a fair chance of working, as it uses an Oxford Semiconductor chip.
www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Express-Pr...dapter/dp/B004G7O2AC

i have that exact one and while i only tried it on stretch, it was a no go. lspci listed it as a serial communication device if i remember correctly, but gave the output addresses and when i used those in the hal, it would give an error parport at address XXXXX could not be found, but to some extent would still move the machine, but would not register any inputs. so it got shelved. i went through 4 pcie and this was the closest that i got to working, the other 3 were complete duds, and one had drivers, but they didnt even come from the mfg AND required a kernel recompile. yeah, i wasn't feeling that one.

Todd wrote:

I'm currently using this port to do software stepping on a machine.
www.newegg.com/p/0J2-000D-00023?item=9SI...uvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

It may not work perfectly, but it works good enough for what I'm doing. It's problem is that the internal pull ups for the inputs don't work in Linux (but they do with Windows.) However it still works if the breakout board supplies the pull up voltage.

i saw that one, but i didnt go with it because like andy said, i would be halfway to a 6i25.

and even with that startec board, i still had the problems with the inputs and my breakout is powered, although i don't know if it is supplying the pullup voltage. i do know that it definitely DOES NOT like 3v3 and if i had to get a level shifter then i am starting to end up like the little old lady who swallowed the fly!