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Mach4 and mini PC
« on: November 14, 2019, 03:13:11 PM »
Anyone have experience with running Mach4 on one of those mini PC's like the AcePC T11?  Are the graphics a problem?

Tia

RT
Re: Mach4 and mini PC
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2019, 05:46:52 PM »
Hi RT,
I run my machine on a dual core Atom Mini-ITX single board PC. It has only the built-in on-chip Intel graphics. The graphics
have been described as awful but they are entirely fine for Mach CNC. Fitted with 4Gb RAM and a 64G mSSD. Note that I've
used a 32 bit Windows 7 Embedded OS. As a consequence of the 32 bit OS only 3Gb of RAM can actually be addressed and because
the graphics share the memory the actual practical memory available to the CPU  is 2.25Gb

All-in-all the wee Atom 'couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding' and yet it runs Mach4 and the ESS seamlessly and it ran Mach3
and two parallel ports seamlessly prior to that.

The only time I notice the Atom struggling is when I load  a PCB isolation routing file of 5Mb or more, its slow to load and very slow
to draw the initial toolpath. Thereafter it runs likes a dream and as far as I'm concerned the graphics are perfect.

Smurh has posted in the past about using a 'Mud' board, a slightly higher spec version of my Atom and he describes similar results,
ie Mach4 runs fine but struggles, or rather is slow, to load big files.

Craig
'I enjoy sex at 73.....I live at 71 so its not too far to walk.'
Re: Mach4 and mini PC
« Reply #2 on: November 16, 2019, 11:17:38 PM »
I'm running an industrial PC with the following specs:
-Intel quad-core Atom E3845, 1.91 GHz
-4GB DDR3
-128GB SSD
-Onboard graphics
-Windows 10 IOT Enterprise

This is well below the minimums for Mach4 however it runs quite well. I use my high end laptop to develop my Mach 4 profiles before copying them to my CNC and the only difference in performance that I see is how long it takes Mach to open and how long it takes to load Gcode files (really only huge ones though)

Offline SimonRafferty

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Re: Mach4 and mini PC
« Reply #3 on: November 20, 2019, 03:47:12 AM »
I'm running Mach4 (and previously Mach3) on an Intel Compute Stick:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-compute-stick-quad-core-atom-x5-z8300-2gb-ram-32gb-emmc-micro-sdxc-slot-ac-wifiplusbt-hdmi-2x-

I honestly didn't expect it to work - but it runs perfectly!  You have to be a bit careful where you buy them from - apparently some are shipped without Win10 pre-installed.  Mine (I have three now) came from Scan.

It's not the fastest PC on the block - but not bad.  It limits you to using a USB Motion Controller as there is no Ethernet (only WiFi) but I imagine a USB to Ethernet Adaptor would work OK.  I used an HDMI extension to connect to a monitor.
Re: Mach4 and mini PC
« Reply #4 on: November 30, 2019, 04:22:32 PM »
Hi,

I am running mach4 on a Intel NUC NUC7PJYH.

It comes with a quad core and clocks up to 2.8 GHz and has Intel HD Graphics 605 chip. As a bonus you can attach two HDMI displays. I use one touch-display for Mach4 and another display for displaying two downscaled full hd video feeds from cameras in the CNC.

Despite the load it works perfectly fluent.

Best regards

Brandon