Motherboard arrived today, and after a hiccup with the power supply, it’s up and running. LinuxCNC 10.04 dual boot installed and running fine. From this point I will speak Linux: heY who do there feet man Ç glUe thing bee loot who the what see balls¡¿
So how was that for you?
I’ve been running Linux for 18 years now and what you say is lost on me here.
Then you know how I feel. Am hoping that the CNC part is a more straight forward thing, else linux will be a frisbee…
Was just playing around with it. Looking at the different programs and busying the system for the latency test. Decided I needed to see the cpu temp n fan speed. So I “clicked” on the ubuntu software center. It showed that a program called fancontrol was already installed. So I look, n look, n look some more. No where to be found. Found a directory (or dose linux use a diff word for that too). No luck running it. Even installed a second program, same thing except I’ve yet to find it’s directory.
Every forum and wiki I’ve found offers a thousand diff “terminal” commands (as in DOS). Point is, I am not relearning another DOS. I mean what’s the point of a fancy GUI at all? I can barely remember the old one when I need it. And I’ve found nothing intuitive about it.
@Mat_Helm
Linux is intuitive if you’re a genius. I suggest you ignore Linux and just focus on LinuxCNC. Linux will do what it does with no intervention on your part.
Personally I’m not very crazy about the GUI front ends when it comes to dealing with the system. I find the command line more convenient. Ubuntu uses Debian’s Package Management System called DPKG and APT. The software center you fooled around with is a crippled front end for the same.
Try this:
apt-cache search sensors
That should have scrolled up a nice list of text for you.
Now just type the command sensors on your command line and there’s your temperatures. Although in that list there should be some GUI front ends for lm-sensors too.
What kernel version is LinuxCNC at currently?
I heard the distribution is severely outdated due to having to maintain the heavy realtime kernel patches.
@Paul_Frederick I use to do that to, the terminal window I mean.
But to understand my reaction to linux last night. Well, lets go back a bit. You know I’ve been dragging out all my old PC builds looking for a parallel port. Well none of them would post. All would spin up the HD’s and cpu fans, but for the most part nothing on the screen. Now the only thing that had been robbed out of them was their power supply. After them not booting, I did remove their HD’s just to check for any old files I might still want (never know what you might find on your 15+ year old HD). But none of them would show up with my little usb IDE/sata reader. So all of them bad too.
Well, as it turned out, the little power supply for the HD reader was bad. They would spin up, at least partly. But not enough to read. So the couple I opened, well, they still may be good. Not that it’s any great lose size wise.
At any rate, the new mother board arrived yesterday. So I drop it into the case that did contain the non posting PII. Power on and the little led on the MB lit, the cpu fan jerked… and nothing. hmmm So I check everything, and it looks good but still nothing. I pull the 24 pin connector and short the green wire with a ground to check it. The cooling fan spins then stops like it’s a bad connection. So I plug it into one of the old builds and it spins up fine. Voltages all read good etc.
Long story short, I ended up popping the top off of my HTPC and plugging in it’s PS to the new build and it runs fine. So the PS that I’d been using to test all my old builds (and don’t forget the little PS for the old HD’s) was bad. Most likely dropping under load. So all my old builds that I’ve now robbed and stripped could have all been fine…
@Marcus_Wolschon
There is just one patch and RTAI maintains it, not LinuxCNC. Or Xenomai depending on which you use. I honestly do not know what exactly is wrong with the LinuxCNC maintainers. But based on their performance something might be going on.
Then again Ubuntu 10.04 is still supported so maybe the LinuxCNC team just does not want to waste resources moving to another version yet?
@Mat_Helm
I had a bad PSU here that ate a couple of motherboards on me before I figured it out. Based on damage I saw I’d say it was putting out excessive ripple. It kept on popping capacitors after some time on whatever motherboard I plugged it into. I think what happened is the filter capacitors went bad in it. Maybe it is something else though? Not really worth the time to investigate. The moral of the story is any aged PSU is automatically suspect. Technically any large electrolytic capacitor over 5 years old is past its prime. Although the higher quality ones usually age more gracefully than the really cheap caps do.
Now for some capacitor love
There I’m getting a bank of series connected electrolytic capacitors to phase shift AC wall current to drive a stepper motor. How’s that for a simple stepper motor drive?
@Paul_Frederick Keep that aligator clipped AC cord around in case your own pumper needs a jump start?.. ;p
I may have to add a nice PS tester to my Christmas list this year. For some reason I have trouble buying nifty testing tools that I only seem to need every couple of years or so… But I do have quite a few now via that list. Only problem is actually finding them when I need em…
@Mat_Helm
I mess with electricity a lot I guess. I wrote an article about my most sophisticated death cord once, but it got delisted from the website I put it up on. I think you can still see it by following this link:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Death-Cord-AKA-Killer-Rabbit/
@Peter_Fouche1
It was not until I got a bit older before I worked up the nerve to build projects that plugged into wall current. To this day I am still a bit leery about that moment I energize something new I’ve made. If there is a mistake the results are often spectacular! To that end I wrote this article
@Peter_Fouche1
If you can’t take something outside to test it I guess the next best thing is a face shield, earplugs, and a chemical fire extinguisher to put it out. The number of things I’ve built that have actually exploded on test is low, but they still leave quite an impression I suppose. I can still remember the first thing like it was moments ago. I built a power supply and I used the pin out information that was printed on the packages the parts came in, and that printed pin out happened to be wrong.
I couldn’t believe how loud TO-200 packages were when they exploded! What made it worse was it happened like 3:30 AM in the morning. I’d stayed up late to finish the project and I just had to try it out before I went to bed. So everything was all calm, still, and quiet, then BOOM! it exploded.
Somehow the setting magnified it for me. Like they say, now I’m once burned, twice shy.
@Peter_Fouche1
To make an AC (non-polar) capacitor wire capacitors with their positive leads out. That is what I did to make my motor running capacitor in the picture I linked to in my earlier post. It is made like this
AC_(+)(+)(+)(+)(+)(+)(+)_(+)_AC
It is something I read about on the Internet and it seems to work. Initially I had my doubts, but so far so good. Although calculating the series value of all of the capacitors to get the specific Farad value I needed using the capacitors I had on hand was a bit tedious. I made each side of my capacitor chain a mirror of the other. I’m not sure if I had to do that, but I did. Voltage rating just adds up across the parts, so that’s easy.
edit: Google does some weirdness to my ASCII capacitor graphic. I hope you can still see what it is supposed to be. It is supposed to look like this
http://i.imgur.com/23GXSB1.png
@Peter_Fouche1 Don’t feel bad, that what the degree on my wall here says, and I’m the same way…
@Peter_Fouche1
I should spend more time with electronics myself. The only way I ever learn about the stuff is by screwing around with it. Here’s the stupidest capacitor trick I’ve ever done. I didn’t believe this was possible when someone told me about it, so I had to try it out for myself
I didn’t need the resistor in the circuit, but I put it in there anyways. Like I said, I really had my doubts. I thought for sure this circuit was going to explode on contact. Two 5mm LEDs running on wall voltage using capacitive reactance to drop the current.
It is a handy pilot light replacement circuit. Neon bulbs are expensive anymore. I just found this on the net
Which is kind of what I made.
In the lab we use to set up little caps n resistors to go pop. Very loud, but the trick was to correctly calculate the time. Got pretty good at it back then…
@Mat_Helm
Hands on is how I learn too.
@Paul_Frederick With that in mind, I recall that one of the things they drummed into us was the danger of accidentally closing an AC circuit with your second hand. As in something starts to fall and you reach to grab it with your free hand without thinking…
For me, I always like to slide my free hand into my back pocket and make a small fist if theres room…
Because as I’m sure you well know, the same jolt that knocked you on you butt, will kill you if it’s path is through your vital organs (one hand to the other)…
That’s my PSA for today… ;p
@Mat_Helm
I normally don’t hold hot things with my first hand for very long.
