Hi,
my machine runs on a dual core Atom single board mini-ITX PC with NO graphics card and only 3G RAM. In short and extremely low powered
PC, less than NFS recommend. Other than being slow to load a large file, say 5MB, and draw the initial toolpath its fine. I've been using it with Mach4
and an ESS for eight years. Its got a 64GB SSD and after eight years 52GB is still free.
The truth is that Mach is NOT a power hungry program, what Mach really requires is a PC with a minimal number of competing services or
software, we want the PC to concentrate on Mach not other stuff. There is inevitably 'other stuff' but try to minimise it.
I'd recommend one of the kids cast-off school laptops, clean all and every bit of software off it bar that that is required to run Mach. That usually includes
your CAD/CAM software, that is better off on your regular day-to-day PC while your machine PC just controls the machine.
As it was explained to me years ago 'when you hook a PC to a machine it is no longer a PC (general purpose computing platform) but a machine
controller that just happens to use Windows as an OS.' It should not be on the internet, and in fact even a network is frowned on.
Craig
Guest
