PathPilot running 7i80 mesa card

Just to let everyone know that I DID get pathpilot running with a 7i80 mesa card. AND it has PLENTY of I/O and other functions available for one to use if needed.

Thanks to all that helped.

AND special thanks to Peter for creating the BIT file for teh 7i80 card.

( TP

ALSO just a note on teh motherboard/ CPU problem . The problm is MS and intel pulled fast one over on everyone. The newest chipsets and cpu will ONLY work with WIN10. There are NO drivers to support Linux Mint AND there are ZERO drivers to even support past versions of Windows . Win7&8 will not run on these board and chips either.

Buyer Beware when you go to buy a new motherboard / CPU.

Hi Vmax

How much work was it to get it running with this setup?

I've done done a parallel port setup with pathpilot and building a second lathe so looking at options for the future at the moment.

Actually making it work IF you understand LinuxCNC is not hard . The hard part is teh EXTREME learning curve to understand LinuxCNC.

As long as you are simply cloning your setup to be a tormach it is a piece of cake. The more you modify PathPilot the harder it gets.

( TP

@Vmas549,
That is kind of what I've been saying.
What we have is users coming here to get PP working with no LinuxCNC experience, That's why our first suggestion is get things working with LinuxCNC then work on getting PP working. This will make life much easier on users if they do this.

Unfortunately that's not the normal case. Like many things, you need to understand the underlying architecture before you can successfully modify things built on it.

If someone is willing to invest the time to learn both PP and LinuxCNC they can get anything working they want.

I always say, PP is nothing more than another GUI for LinuxCNC, all LinuxCNC internals are there. however to get to them you might need to have a build environment to work in. then any modules you want are available. but if you want support in the gui you have to write it. PP is for Tormach Machines, it's not a general purpose GUI like AXIS

The real problem with that senario is it may take an average person a year or MORE to half way learn how LinuxCNC works. MOST will never get there. I have used about every DIY controller out there and LinuxCNC is the MOST EXTREME learning curve of the bunch. It seems they went to great lengths just to make it hard to use (. I do believe it could be made much simpler to setup and modify.

( TP

Of course you beleive that way . All LinuxCNC programmers believe that. The average Joe will disagree with you as well. But that is why there are so many other controllers to pick from and LinuxCNC will remain obscure at best.

Why would I want to try and fix it. I am not teh Man in charge. Besides what you just said is one of teh most repeated sayings in teh LinuxCNC world. IF you don't like it then learn to program and fix it yourself. That drives off potential users faster than anything that could be said. The Linuxcnc gurus have been saying that since EMC.

( TP



It is what it is, (;-)TP

Vmax549 wrote:

The real problem with that senario is it may take an average person a year or MORE to half way learn how LinuxCNC works. MOST will never get there.

I think that is crap. Using either stepconf or pncconf the average user should be able to have his machine operational in half a day. Heck, I managed to get mine going just by editing the config files by hand without any experience or any drama.

But people insist on trying to get an unsupported GUI built by a manufacturer for their own machines operational on different hardware and flounder time and again. So when they fail, they blame Linuxcnc ? Personally I don't think there should be a section on this forum for PathPilot.There is nothing in the LInuxcnc docs about it so why should users here support it?

I think we need to seperate 2 different types of users here and fix one statement
it does not take a year to learn LinuxCNC,

For the average user who just wants to run PP, download LinucCNC, run PCNCONF or StepConf and you're up and running as a average user in a very short time. a day or two as your tweak things.

For the user looking to customize PP yes that takes longer if you have no exposure to LinuxCNC first. This is that persons learning curve which could be short or long. I would not say it takes a year to learn LinuxCNC no mater what however.

I know I try to get new users to PP to first get their machine working with LinuxCNC then move to PP. Then when they come here with "It works in LinuxCNC but I don't understand the INI and HAL files" we'll willing to help.

BTW you can run PNCCONF and StepConf from PP. I've added the files and even added ADMIN PNCCONF and ADMIN STEPCONF to the ADMIN commands (just playing around, learning).

As I have stated, PP is a GUI, Tormach made it to support their machines and to support their customers they restricted what it does and does not do. this is not unusual to see vendors disable features of products the incorporate into their support structure.

if you live in that PP is not hard to get running. My one wish of Tormach that would make it easier is if they would sell their machine controller boards to anyone instead of only registered users. then running PP would be a snap for users who want to just run it