Upgrading my Centroid

I have a centroid controlled mill that uses LinuxCNC under the hood. I don't mind the gui it has, but I would like to upgrade to a newer version of Linuxcnc. I am not sure if it would break the install or not, as I am sure it has proprietary layers built in. Is an upgrade even possible, or maybe even a wipe and clean install? I would like more capabilities that aren't offered with the base package of software from Centroid. Also, if I did upgrade, does LinuxCNC have conversational cnc or canned cycles? I did a quick search and didn't find anything definitive. Not a deal breaker if it doesn't, I just have a lot of simple jobs, such as facing, drilling some holes, etc and have learned to use them through Centroid's gui. Any thoughts, advice or words of wisdom would be much appreciated.
 

Doesn’t that run under Windows ?

It doesn't. It is an older version of Centroid, If you look up centroid CNC10 and look up the manual, (page 2-1) it can run under Linux or windows, when mine boots, I can see it's Linux.

If it runs under both I doubt it would be Linuxcnc, I’d guess it would be a proprietary application that communicates to the controller board. If the driver board communicates via USB it certainly will not be Linuxcnc.

It would be nice if you could link to the appropriate section of the manual.
The best way to find out would be to ask for the Linux sources from the company.

Some things to consider.

What Linux distribution is being used.
There may not be pre built packages available for your Linux setup.
Which python version is installed could be a limiting factor.
The Real time kernel version being used.
If there is no prebuilt packages available you will need to build linuxcnc from source.
Are you absolutely 100% sure it’s linuxcnc under the hood ?
If there is any custom hardware in you setup, the big standard linuxcnc sources may not have any suitable drivers.
Then there’s the spec of the computer currently running everything.

I think the first thing you need to do is to confirm 100% that it is “linuxcnc under the hood” and what if any customisations have been made.

Here is the link to the manual, it is on page 99 of the PDF, which is page 2-1 of the manual.

www.centroidcnc.com/downloads/cnc10_install_service_manual.pdf

I am at work right now, so I can't get a pic of the boot up screen, but I will when I get home.

Centroid does not use Linuxcnc on your Linux system.
Your Centroid board will not be compatible with linuxcnc
You will need to replace your board with probably a Mesa card to get up and running.
There is some conversational stuff around but its not current with the latest Python versions. There is some work to migrate it to QT. The QTdragon GUI has some conversational features.

Here are the screenshots. Google only returns LinuxCNC when I search for "cnc Linux" with quotes. I was thinking maybe that was the project name before it was EMC, but I figured you would know

tommylight wrote:

Yes, that is Linux, for sure, seems like Ubuntu 8.04 GRUB menu, that was still EMC2 back then.
Picture of the electronics box? Does the PC get to the desktop? Did you see any mention of QEMU, VBOX, Virtual anything mentioned while booting or after boot?

I am not sure what you mean by electronics box. The HMI looks like the one below. It is the M400 model.
it contains an off the shelf motherboard and a zip drive as I don't think they had SSDs back then. Then it connects to a PLC, that's called PLCIO2. That is in the electrical cabinet and is pretty buried. It also has a motion control card that uses fiber optic cables.
I was thinking of just unplugging the zip drive and booting from a flash drive, just to play around and see what I can do. I may not be able to do anything, I just figured I would ask going in, in case anybody else had tried it I don't see anything about any virtual machines during or after boot.

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