Machinekit Blog

Machinekit Blog: "In the past, the argument for minimum latency has been its usefulness for software-based step generation and quadrature encoders - the actual servo cycle computations do not need that low latency. But fact is - the PC's parallel port is an extinct piece of hardware (and even then RT-PREEMPT can deliver reasonable software step rates). Plus, inexpensive FPGA hardware can deliver higher performance if needed."

'via Blog this'

This quote is the first time I have seen it acknowledged that the parallel port is gone. I had wondered why it looks as though it is still the only way to interface to hardware.

Yesterday after reading the above article I put

                       FPGA hardware linuxcnc

into the google search box and got a bunch of interesting results.    FPGA field programmable gate array.

My problem with the LINUXCNC documentation is it is very dense reading. I will need to reread it with the knowledge that other hardware interfaces are available in addition to the legacy parallel port. When I scanned the appropriate sections I originally saw nothing about other routes.    

I have this in my EverNote and will post this here so I don't forget.
Now I need to let this set for a couple of months and get back to FREECAD.

 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RaspberryPi
 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RaspbianXenomaiBuild
 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?LinuxCNCKnowledgeBase
 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?FPGA
 https://emergent.unpythonic.net/01166412010
 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?EMC2_Supported_Hardware