Laptop with Parallel Port

[Jerry Rutherford]

Does anyone have any laptops that are in working condition, with a parallel port, that they no longer want?

I am doing things like the Frankenlab CNC project which uses the parallel port as the interface... and laptops with a parallel port are getting harder to find.

At home I have been using a desktop... but for show-&-tell functions... it is more equipment to carry around with separate monitors, etc. Until LinuxCNC ports a USB version that I can still program and operate custom panels with... that's what I need. I think I have one here for today / this project... I'll be stealing it from the PUMA robot and putting LinuxCNC on it. At that point... I'll need to use another laptop for the PUMA... but USB serial cables are cheap and abundant.

Jerry

Askjerry... everyone else does.
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[Joe N]

I have a Dell dock with parellel port for business dell laptops you can have the bottom port dock

http://m.ebay.com/itm/Dell-0PW395-Monitor-Stand-E-series-Latitude-Precision-Laptop-Dock-25252-/262568995503?nav=SEARCH

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[B L Gupton]

I have a Panasonic Toughbook CF-29 with a parallel port: Pentium-M with 2GB of RAM and a 3.5" floppy, with a CF-port pair and an SD-card slot running Slackware 14.2. Two USB ports and a VGA port as well.

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-------- Original message --------
From: Jerry Rutherford <jerryaru...@gmail.com>
Date: 8/14/16 11:29 AM (GMT-06:00)
To: Austin Hacker Space New <atxhs-...@googlegroups.com>, The Robot Group Mailing List <robot...@puremagic.com>
Subject: [atxhs-discuss] Laptop with Parallel Port

Does anyone have any laptops that are in working condition, with a parallel port, that they no longer want?

I am doing things like the Frankenlab CNC project which uses the parallel port as the interface... and laptops with a parallel port are getting harder to find.

At home I have been using a desktop... but for show-&-tell functions... it is more equipment to carry around with separate monitors, etc. Until LinuxCNC ports a USB version that I can still program and operate custom panels with... that's what I need. I think I have one here for today / this project... I'll be stealing it from the PUMA robot and putting LinuxCNC on it. At that point... I'll need to use another laptop for the PUMA... but USB serial cables are cheap and abundant.

Jerry

Askjerry... everyone else does.
Visit me online at http://askjerry.info
See my projects, video links, tutorials, and blog today.

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[Riley]

Sounds like that's just about perfect for Jerry's portable mill, and installing LinuxCNC 2.7+Debian on CF/SD is a piece of cake.

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Riley






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[Danny Miller]

Laptops rarely work well for CNC because their chipsets use extensive system management interrupts for power management which can cause massive jitter in the realtime tasks, which can be a show-stopper.  This is especially true if using a parallel port which requires constant servicing every few milliseconds and is intolerant of any jitter at all.

Best thing by far on the market is a Mesa 7i92 ethernet card.  They're not that expensive and you'll never want to touch PP again.

Danny

[B L Gupton]

The toughbook I have shouldn't have that problem, because it doesn't have any power management in the bios, it apparently predates those concerns, and is rather long-lasting without it. A RT kernel can easily be installed and the software PM functions disabled to keep it from bugging out or locking up when the lid is closed.

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-------- Original message --------

[SteveBaker]

I find it amazing that CNC tools still use parallel ports and rely on precise timing from a non-realtime computer.  That's really just terrible engineering!

We're in to the 21st century now - we have personal jetpacks and flying cars already!  OK...well maybe not - but for an expenditure of a whopping $2 you can buy a complete Linux computer (eg ESP8266) with plenty of parallel I/O wires and *nothing* else to do other than to run the program that serves the CNC machine...then you can connect your actual computer via Ethernet/WiFi/USB/BlueTooth/RS-232/telepathy and decouple all of those ancient legacy issues (you might have to splurge $9 to get some of those interfaces).

The Linux box can run Apache and MySQL - so the interface to the machine can be web-based and now your end user can drive/monitor the machine from a Mac/Linux/Windows computer...or a phone or a tablet or a suitably smart wrist-watch.  It can include a $14 camera so you can see what the machine is up to on your Dick Tracy-style wrist-phone when you have to run to the bathroom.

If having even a dedicated Linux machine doesn't deliver sufficiently jitter-free timing, then add a $0.60 ATMel microcontroller to do the "hard-realtime" tasks and connect that to the $9 Linux box that can handle all of the interfacing to whatever machine the user is actually sitting in front of.  From that arrangement you can get perfect microsecond-accurate timing to the actual hardware - while still presenting a super-friendly front-end...and add maybe $20 to the cost of your CNC machine....which is probably less than the cost of  buying an antiquated parallel port cable!   All of the software to do this is OpenSourced - so there isn't even THAT excuse.

So *WHY* do we still have such antiquated interfaces?   Is there some kind of Steam-punk love of "Centronics" ports?

My Lasersaur lasercutter actually does exactly.  Admittedly, it's 4 years old - so it uses a hideously expensive ($36) BeagleBone and a $26 Arduino - rather than a $9 CHIP or $5 RaspberryPi Zero or a $2 ESP8266 and a $0.60 AtMel chip.   But I really can (and do) drive it from my cellphone.

   -- Steve

[dan...@austin.rr.com]

Well a lot of CNC still uses parallel port, but it is not just archaic, it brings a lot of problems and limitations. The step timing is time-critical when you ask for higher speeds, and PP is poor and inconsistent with its jitter.

Atmel controllers are NOT well-suited for being a motion controller unless you're talking about a super low-performing machine though. All the effective controllers are FPGA based, which is not a big deal.

Initially, about 6 yrs ago the FPGA-based USB Smoothstepper came out for Mach3 machines. First working consumer piece I know of. That USB link had some problems and was soon replaced by Ethernet FPGA Smoothstepper. That's "much better" but had some dogged problems with Mach3 that inherently come from the Mach3 and Windows side. Neither Mach3 nor the Windows OS is realtime and that bears consequences for motion control, in addition to simple bugs.

Mesa had been making FPGA motion controllers for awhile that worked with LinuxCNC but they were PCI based and required locating the PC with the drivers or running long cabling, and fairly complicated.

But about a year ago Mesa came out with the 7i92, ethernet based, FPGA card which works with LinuxCNC. THAT one is high performer and very different than Mesa's other products. You want it coupled with the new Linux RT kernel and the LinuxCNC RT build, and use a software PLL to manage the bridge between the PC and FPGA clock domains. That does something RADICALLY different, in that internally it becomes a TRUE realtime system, which has never been possible before. Jitter is almost nonexistence and latency is a fantastically low baseline. This may not seem outwardly different to the end user but it is remarkably better at motion control and open to a lot of neat tricks that don't work reliably with non-RT systems.

It also simplifies the physical build. You place the DC power, stepper drives, and 7i92 in one box and only need an ethernet cable to link them, and the cable length is noncritical. The 7i92 comes with more than enough IO to support 5 or even 6 steppers and inputs for limit switches and all that.

7i92 is only about $90, so yeah, go for it. All the setup tech exists, but not well documented. You're probably gonna google it and find a lot of bitching online about not being able to get it set up. Most of that's from me, to be honest.

Danny

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[Steve Baker]

dan...@austin.rr.com wrote:

> Atmel controllers are NOT well-suited for being a motion controller unless
> you're talking about a super low-performing machine though. All the
> effective controllers are FPGA based, which is not a big deal.

I'm surprised that you say that. The relatively low-powered Atmel chip on
the original Arduino does a great job for our laser cutters - and lasers
are amongst the faster CNC platforms.

What do you base your assessment of that on?

-- Steve

[John Morris]

You might consider running Machinekit, a fork of LinuxCNC, for which RCN builds an official Machinekit BBB image.  For show'n'tell, you can add a (touch) screen, remote X display, or (extra cool but extra challenging) run the Cetus or Machineface GUI on a remote Android device or GNU/Linux, Windogs or Mac PC.

The ThinkPad X31s that I've used forever are getting old, the motherboard caps are failing, and people are junking them.  That's awesome hardware, and IBM gives enough BIOS options to tune power-saving features to where the X31 can bit-bang the onboard parport pins at 20kHz without missing steps.  But folks are starting to move away from software stepping since special hardware like FPGA cards and the BeagleBone with its PRUs is getting so cheap and accessible, and I'm sure I recently heard wishes from LCNC developers about abandoning parport support.

    John

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