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tommylight wrote:

I have used M93P and 9020, both work perfectly well, but the Del heats a lot.
1 of M93P and 2 of 9020 are in use daily for several years.
Be aware that even getting the exact same model sometimes will not work, something as simple as a dried capacitor can render any of those PC useless for machine control and be perfectly OK for normal use.
If you can test before buying, download the official ISO, write to USB and use that USB to test the PC using one of the included parallel port configurations (does not matter if the PC has the port or not), might not always work, but if it does leave it running the test gcode and play some youtube videos, maximize and minimize the screen several times, let it run for half hour. If you get latency warnings for the base period, it still might be OK, but if you get servo warnings, shut it down, test another.

Gotcha, sadly I can't check them beforehand so I will just go with one that looks "clean", not dropped too often, not looking like it has been running in a dusty office non-stop for 8 years and from a seller with a good rating. 
But good to hear you think both brands will do well. I'll give some thoughts to the Dells running hot though as I am in the tropics. AC is incoming for the workshop, but it will still be on the warm side - the AC is as much for my comfort as it is to keep the humidity and rust down in the workshop. 

So, here's the thing, I can't test anything, at all, ever before buying... Reason being, I am sourcing all of this from China. I used to be based there for work, but now I am on an island in the Phillippines, so I buy everything pretty much sight unseen and most of it from China and it gets here a month or so later. I've bought servos, servo drivers, VFDs and a bunch of smaller bits and bobs all used and was about to buy used (Japanese) linear rails and ball screws for my own build when I came across an almost fully functioning cast iron router in the size I needed so I jumped on that instead to get started cutting as soon as possible. But pretty much every items has been as advertised or better and some of the deals have been sweet.

Anyhow, all this just to say, I have to hope my luck isn't about to run out as the PC and touchscreen will also be secondhand and I can't test them beforehand... But the secondhand apps in China are now like Ebay in the early days, good deals and honest sellers who go out of their way to make sure any flaw is properly depicted. 

I'll probably jinx it just be thinking this but with the money I've saved so far on these buys, I can afford a lemon. But yeah, hoping not to get one, of course:)

I'll look into it. Been a bit busy of late.

Screen size and resolution goes hand in hand.
My 17-inch touch for the milling machine use 1280x720 and I run the low-res qtdragon there and it works great, buttons are good size and sliders too.
On the lathe the 24-inch touch screen use gmoccapy in 1920x1080 and most things are ok size but there are sliders that are a bit hard to hit because they are so small. And the size is too large, need to move the hand and arm for many things.
The screen resolution (virtual screen resolution?) can be set and for example a 15.6-inch laptop-ish touch screen with 1920x1080 resolution can be set to 1280x720 (virtual?) resolution and have all the graphical elements come out in a more reasonable size.

I have used M93P and 9020, both work perfectly well, but the Del heats a lot.
1 of M93P and 2 of 9020 are in use daily for several years.
Be aware that even getting the exact same model sometimes will not work, something as simple as a dried capacitor can render any of those PC useless for machine control and be perfectly OK for normal use.
If you can test before buying, download the official ISO, write to USB and use that USB to test the PC using one of the included parallel port configurations (does not matter if the PC has the port or not), might not always work, but if it does leave it running the test gcode and play some youtube videos, maximize and minimize the screen several times, let it run for half hour. If you get latency warnings for the base period, it still might be OK, but if you get servo warnings, shut it down, test another.

I have a 23" Dell touchscreen on the Mazak lathe, 24" non touch on everything else.

Cant do this anymore bye all wrote:

Why we don't go all the way and design a RISCV Linuxcnc SoC ?

That is a good idea, that would make everything Open Source.
That would also probably imply using a slim distro, or trimming Debian, a lot!

Cant do this anymore bye all wrote:

(actually I can't even afford to replace my old car that had to go to scrapyard). hahahahaha

Last year i sold my new-ish car and kept the now 20 year old one!
The new-ish one had so much electronic cr@p that the only thing i did while driving it was steering!
I like Manual gearbox, i like to drive, be in control... control freak

Hello Rodw, I think this is what I am coming-up against. When running 'sudo halcmd loadusr -W Icec_conf ethercat-conf.xml ' I get 'commandlin>:0: execv(Icec_conf): no such file or directory' then 'waitpid failed Icec_conf', and then 'Icec_conf exited'..
I'm on the last parts of setting up Ethercat and get stumped by this.
Also, thank you for pointing me in the right direction on the RTAI thread wrt ethercat.

Sorry not clicking on to you were going the Mesa route, and the touch screen, so I guess you’ll want hdmi for video as well.

My excuse, uhmmm well anyway, you know the thing.

Buy two, one for the router and one as a back up

C’mon you know it makes sense.

Cant do this anymore bye all wrote:

Kinda depends of whether you want to use a mesa card (then just about anything PC will do), if you want use a parallel port then it's a different kettle of fish.

I'm kinda a fan of Lenovos, have a couple of Thinkpads T61 & T530 (use this everyday and do alot with it), a S20 ThinkStation (this gets a lot of use, builds Mesa firmware when needed), M93 that runs Win10 for Mum and a M72e with a i5 3470 (found this by the side of the road, use this for all sorts, alot of testing various driver board projects for Linuxcnc).
Also have used a Asrock J3355B-ITX which ran the mill fine with a Mesa 7i92, tho I changed the cabinet and use a Odroid H2 Plus (has 2 etherent ports so thats great) which works great with the Mesa card.
Apart from Mums computer, everything runs Linux, the T61, S20 & T530 also dual boot various windows installs which I really try to avoid using.

 

Oh! I left out that important piece of info: Yes, yes, totally yes to a Mesa board:)

I felt that it would be OK, at these used prices, to get a slightly better, less old PC in case my main computer which I design on (a Macbook Pro, sorry;)) craps out all of a sudden and I need to use the 'mill computer' to run Fusion on. Since that Mac is actually my sole other computer, I think this still makes sense for a backup plan.  
(Which reminds me, I guess I'd still need to have a windows partition on that machine computer for that oh, shit scenario lined out above...)

It looks like you have the needed components for this (limit2 and near)
but they are not connected.

That is you have the PID spindle speed  command coming directly
from the commanded spindle speed:net spindle-vel-cmd-rpm => pid.s.commandRather than having been fed through the limit2 component.

 Also the limit2 maxv (which limits the ramp rate) is not set

Similarly you do not have the near component connected
nor is the near components  scale or difference values set
 

depends on your hardware. is this an older pc? you may be able to grab a cheap video card that uses the later version.

Kinda depends of whether you want to use a mesa card (then just about anything PC will do), if you want use a parallel port then it's a different kettle of fish.

I'm kinda a fan of Lenovos, have a couple of Thinkpads T61 & T530 (use this everyday and do alot with it), a S20 ThinkStation (this gets a lot of use, builds Mesa firmware when needed), M93 that runs Win10 for Mum and a M72e with a i5 3470 (found this by the side of the road, use this for all sorts, alot of testing various driver board projects for Linuxcnc).
Also have used a Asrock J3355B-ITX which ran the mill fine with a Mesa 7i92, tho I changed the cabinet and use a Odroid H2 Plus (has 2 etherent ports so thats great) which works great with the Mesa card.
Apart from Mums computer, everything runs Linux, the T61, S20 & T530 also dual boot various windows installs which I really try to avoid using.

I have not yet. I’ll give that a shot for a wiring diagram.

Interesting in the different board. They look almost identical. This machine was for sheet metal only so maybe that would be the difference.

found a meldas 300 controller with most of the parts. got it working and initializing a MR-S11 drive. hooked up a logic analyzer and it looks fairly straight forward... next, i need to get the motor spinning and rig up some kind of an interface board...