Suitability of Adlink DPAC Industrial PC

Hi guys,

I've just been given a cute little fanless industrial PC, and I'm trying to decide if it is suitable for a CNC project my brother is starting. 

It's an ADlink DPAC-3000 - it has a single N270 Atom processor, 1Gb memory, and a 4Gb CD flash card. It has an interesting array of ports, including: 4 network, (two of which are labeled Motionet and HSL); two serial; a Firewire, (which is labeled as GPIO); VGA port, two USB; and an older style keyboard port. Regrettably, it does not have a parallel port, or any PCI/PCIe slots. (See attached datasheet for more information.)

I've loaded LinuxCNC Wheezy 2.7, ran the HAL Latency test, and got some respectable Base Thread jitter values of 20,000 us. However, without the parallel port, this seems pretty much seems irrelevant.  So, the question is, would this be suitable for Linuxcnc with one of the Mesa ethernet interface cards like the 7i76E?  And can you think of any other options that would allow me to use this PC?

Cheers, Steve.

 

Mesa ethernet cards require the PREEMPT_RT kernel. From memory 2.7 does not include that. Try the 2.8 ISO and see how you go with latency before you consider buying a mesa card.

"Motionnet" sounds rather interesting.

I haven't managed to find much detail on the protocol. So writing a LinuxCNC driver for those ports might be a challenge.

If the others are conventional Ethernet then that is probably easier, though it seems a shame.

Some teasers here: scsembeddedtech.com/industrial-computing...-motion-control.html