Hi there,
I bought an Atom based single board computer and Windows 7 Embedded about a year ago. It runs Mach3 beautifully.

Since then I have seen a number of boards that would probably make a excellent standalone system for Mach3.

Is there any interest amongst users to collaborate on a project to build such a system or systems which may be of interest/value to the wider
community of Mach3 users?

Craig

There are two new boards for embedded developers/hackers/makers:

Minnow board V2 (Intel dual core Atom) at $140US  (try minnowboard.org)
Gizmo2 board (AMD  dual core G series) at $200US.  (try gizmosphere.org)

Both of these have integrated North and South bridge, CPU cores and GPU, both have Ethernet, HDMI, USB's and micro SD on a 4inch square PCB drawing less than
10W. There are subtle differences too, the Intel offering with SATA2 whereas the AMD one has mSATA.

Both have custom expansion connections, high and low speed with PCIe, SATA, serial of various descriptions, GPIO, CAN, SPI, PWM, video ports etc...
 
These boards are intended to be open source but to date neither has developed the following like the Raspberry and consequently there are few expansion boards about.

If I can find some other enthusiasts I would put my hand up to design an expansion board containing two PCIe slots for parallel port cards.
Maybe it would be better to have two PCIe to parallel chips and bypass the slot. Hey come to think about it maybe build the breakout buffering/logic on the one board and do away
with the parallel cable. Prehaps that's being a bit ambitious!

Craig

Hi all,
thinking that the Gizmo board and the Minnow board maybe a bit ambitious particularly in absence of other contributors. However this board

[url]http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~D2500HN[url]

might be of interest. About $80US with one built in PP and a PCI slot for a second.  Add a gig or so of ram a cheap and cheerful HD, rob your old power supply and monitor...$200US all up.
Install your preferred OS and cut chips with a 'crispy new' platform. Don't know about you but I paid over a grand for a highspeed spindle...

Craig

I have a Foxconn mini on the back of a 17" Acer monitor, and it works great. 2-USB 3.0 ports, and 4-USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet port, WiFi
etc. I installed a 120 Gb SSD. It has run an ESS plasma machine, and is now running a little desktop router/engraver.

Has anyone considered using one of these 12" Tablets running Win 8 Pro. With a Bluetooth keyboard, it could be a complete system taking up very little space. It is a touch screen, and pretty powerful.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215871

There is a vid on Youtube of a tablet running UCCNC router; Mach3 would be no different. Just be sure to not get Win 8 Rt. The Rt version of windows will not even run the very popular Classic Shell for Win 8.

John

Hi John,
I too am delighted with my new platform, the reliability of the new hardware and the stability of embedded OS has allowed me to concentrate
on machining rather than control system glitches.
I have not invested in an external controller so 32bit Win7 for me. My general machine (inside and in the warm!) is Intel i7 and Win8. I have M3
installed and use it to experiment with macros and things but can't machine with it in absence of a controller, not to mention licence aspect.
Personally don't like the Metro shell much but M3 runs fine and displays in a classic window. Are you suggesting that there is a version of Win8
that cannot display an app in a classic window? Would have thought that MS would shudder at the prospect that their customers can no longer
run desktop apps and thereby lose their custom and all those LUVLY $$$$.

Craig

you should see if you can get M4 running on one of these types of boards using Ethernet or USB if you can it might be a little money earner for you if you can sale it with a screen and a motion controler

Hi,
I think daniellyall is correct, many Mach users are running old XP machines which are becoming less and less reliable.
Much of the newer hardware or rather the newer Windows OS's have been problematic for a lot who have tried going
by the number of posts on the subject.
External motion controllers are the way forward and work on platforms/OS's that PP won't. I haven't tried M4 yet but
the forum posts indicate that it will be a better performer than M3 in time and will run on any well configured platform
of recent design with an external controller. Even the Darwin PP driver is living up to its 'best of the breed' billing albeit
constraining of OS.
A well priced solution like John has suggested could prove very popular.

Craig

I would stay away from acer.

M4 as it is, is better than M3 I have run Darwin with no problems and played with using a ESS once I got it working properly I packed up an went home, reason I have never had the machine its on running better
as in +/- 0.02mm

Personally don't like the Metro shell much but M3 runs fine and displays in a classic window.

Spend $3 for "Start is Back" and Windows 8 will be just like Windows 7, without the transparent title bars.  

You'll never see the Metro interface again. 

I went to the website of "Classic Shell", and under the topic FAQ's, they specifically state that it will not run on Windows 8.1 RT.

Also, I emailed the author of "startisback", and asked the same question regarding his program running on Win 8.1 RT. I just received the reply; Will NOT run on Win RT.

Win RT apparently is a totally separate kind of application from Win 8.0, and Win 8.1 Why MicroSoft would make such a program is anybody's guess. Windows 8.1 RT is the program on the MicroSoft "Surface" family of tablet computers. Mine is a Surface-2, and is certainly a nice tablet with a superb touch screen, and full size USB 3.0 port, memory chip port, sound port, HDMI port.

If I knew this incompatibility issue, I would not have purchased it. The MS "Start" package that you must work thru seems to be designed for social networks, and sending/receiving pics and music. They call the different applications "Charms" and in the several hours I have tried to use make sense of it, has been a totally "maddening" experience.
It almost seems to be more of a "psychological experiment", than a usable computer.

John