Recommended hardware

PCW wrote: It does seem that the SOES now supports some devices like the LAN9252 that have data sheets that are not under NDA protection. We made a Ethercat device a couple years ago using a ET1100 that at the time had quite restrictive licenses, and truly dreadful documentation.

I'm sure mesa supporters will eagerly await V2 Ethercat seems to be gathering a head of steam in commercial systems

@PCW,

Currently i am writing a Etercat c code glue model. I have the i/o working on the etherlab side on 64 bit Linux. The glue to
Linuxcnc is now i am working on. It's hard to work with 3 different c complilers. So i have a plan.
I think you might be able to test it on a already existing mesa fpga board. Only thing would be to write a hotmost3 glue model
for mesa ethercat electronics.

My opinion is to write a universal glue module for Linuxcnc to exernal c program application's, Now i have the idea it looks like importing 2 separate bitfiles in the glue model. I call it bitfiles now, but it are in fact c information files.

@Rodw,

I think ethercat is a nice product. But it's hard to setup for future Linuxcnc generation's. Everyone know it wil be 64 bit system's
or higher. Now It only run's on a old Linuxcnc 32 bit version.
Maybe Sascha can make an update to the .so file for 64 bit kernels. The source code of Sascha's kernel driver is so far i know only available as package inluded an .so file. Then there was a patch that i did not understand how to install.
Then i started from scratch.

Grotius, sorry I have not played with ethercat. I won't be in the forseeable future. I thought the source was available as there was discussions about it on the developers mailing list a few months ago. Its probably a case of knowing where to look. Then you can compile on a 64 bit system.

regarding Dell PCs. I am just setting up linuxcnc. I happen to have a Dell T1500 which has 2 PCI slots so I fitted a cheap chinese parallel port card which seems to work with linuxcnc OK (still setting up as of Dec18)

www.aliexpress.com/item/Great-Q-1Port-I-...-to/32831133280.html

A workmate uses the Dell 760s and Dell 780s as they have an on-board parallel port card for his cncs. Trying to get a 790 to try but that will need an addon card so I might as well use the later 990 or 9010 series. I do have 990s and 9010s but its quite hard to get a parallel port card with a small form factor as for its bracket I'll 3d print one I suspect. So to make life easier you want the MT (minitower case)