Amiga One X 1000 and Xena/Xorro

[Boot_WB]

To produce anything that is more durable than a toy found in a Happy Meal ?

Lol. Glad to see someone else is as sceptical about 3D printers usefulness as I am.

@Hans

RE CNC - I can see your point as a hobbyist idea (it _could_ be done) but what kind of CNC are you considering that needs such low latency feedback from the sensors to control stepping motor functions?

Designs are generally done on paper/screen, then transferred as-is to any kind of CNC manufacturing tool (considering lathes, milling machines, drills, etc) for pumping out the work.

AFAICS (although I've not been involved in design of machinery) Sensors are generally used to (re) calibrate position and displacement of the tool, not for reactive decisions during manufacturing. Stepping motors by their very nature have a known displacement per 'step' and therefore don't require real-time monitoring except during recalibration.

By nature, stepping motors and CNC machinery just don't need that kind of processing power or real-time control. Hence most are controlled by a small low power microcontroller with a USB/floppy interface to allow G-code to be transferred to the machine to control manufacture.

I genuinely don't see what advantage Xena/Xorro bring here, and do see disadvantages of complication. This doesn't seem to utilise Xena/Xorro much beyond (as you have observed) a parallell port.

Perhpas something like robotics control maybe - considering a 'walking robot' that requires constant feedback for eg balance.
However like any specialist application, it's better to choose the most appropriate solution to the problem, not start with a given solution and try to fit the problem around it.

I remain confused as to what function Xena/Xorro provides that is advantageous.

[Boot_WB]

@Lyle

Thanks for the insights from your perspective on this, it's good to hear from the horse's mouth where development stands. :-)

Reply too long, continued here from previous reply.

And why haven't I bothered to finish my Logger? Friends, I have been busy with other coding projects. "Fun" stuff like Xena, and like my own pet project "Score", have gone completely untouched for well over a year now. Only two weeks ago I decided to stop all my other projects and work only on Score... for my own sanity if nothing else.

I sympathise immensely.
As someone who is renovating my kitchen, living room, garden and 'spare room' whilst simulataneously trying to run a business and set up a second one in parallel... I can seriously sympathise.
Last week I realised that in order to drive forward the improvements I want to make in some areas, I really need to get my home life back in order - so am taking the rest of July off to concentrate on finishing the WIP at home.
Disrupted kitchen = no cooking, no cooking = poor diet, poor diet = poor physical/mental condition, which undermines the work I'm trying to accomplish in other areas.

@Hans

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this and I'm really not trying to be negative (I think Dandy and I had pretty much the same discussion on AW.net a while back).
The design and manufacture of a homebrew milling machine is well within my sphere of interest (although the control side of things make me think of Laplace transforms which makes me want to run screaming from the building) and I would certainly be interested in the work you do.
As you said, I think whenever I read ideas about Xena I'm applying the filter of "what are X-core's strengths?" and not seeing them being particularly harnessed.

Considering Xena as a hobbyist port is probably a more constructive way to approach it than trying to find _that problem_ for which Xena is the solution.

[Boot_WB]

There exist 3D printers that can print out metallic parts. (very expensive devices, used by some prototype labs)
(I have held some printouts on my hand.)

Shapes made of metal perhaps, but probably not useful metallic parts:

http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbmessage.pl/general/35153.shtml

[Boot_WB]

The idea obviously came from Varisys, no "If" about it.  

Perhaps the specific suggestion of using X-Core might have come from Varisys, and developed into the Xorro/Xena thing, but it's unlikely that a professional design company would have suggested an additional component/design feature be added to the motherboard which doesn't fulfill any critical or even desirable (more like 'wishlist') aspect of the design specification without being prompted to do so.

I think it's more likely it was suggested as a possibility to Hyperion/A-Eon's brainstorming of "how can we customise it in some way to make it a bit different/special/appeal to Amiga users?"

From that perspective, it would have been more about marketing than practicality.

Now it's a 'why not?' for future designs, since presumably good design practice will have made the whole Xena/Xorro subsystem modular enough to copy/paste (more or less) onto the newer designs.

[Boot_WB]

If so, why on earth would anyone not use the excellent tools on a PC or Mac?

Would the dev environment run under emulation (eg Bochs) on an X1000?

[Boot_WB]

Curently, people seem to be having a hard time finding uses for the XENA that require the chip to be inside the Amiga(one) case, putting XENA plus a prototyping area on a ZORRO card is intended to encourage "inside the box" thinking.

X-Core already exist on PCI, and Amiga can be expanded with a PCI bus.
What would be the advantage in developing a Zorro based version?

It may be that classic Amigas need XENA more than the Amigaone does.

That is really confusing as I've not heard a single Amiga user crying out for the lack of a Xena slot, or even wondering if there are X-Core PCI drivers for Mediator/G-Rex.

[Boot_WB]

OK This is my last word on the subject.

We are in the process of producing a couple of Xorro specific boards which will be compatible with both the AmigaONE x1000 and future X-based models including the A1-X5000/20 & A1-X5000/40.

More news will be released when they are available for sale.

TrevorD

Interesting, I'd heard mention of a board (or riser?) which allows user access to the i/o pins for interfacing homebrew electronics etc. That should make it a little easier to use for hobbyist work.
I look forward to hearing more details.

[Boot_WB]

It is available now from Amigakit here http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=43&products_id=1135

For a blank board, I think it is overpriced, but you may think differently.

Price-wise, the one you linked to seems to be pretty good value. Given the number of vias, I'd be surprised if Amigakit is making more than a nominal handling fee on them.
That's not the one I was thinking of though, it looks more like a breadboard.

The board I (thought I had) heard mentioned offered the Xorro slot's i/o pins (and possibly power, etc) to a connector (eg a D-Sub) on the backplane.

@Amigakit - not sure if you have already, and I'm sure you'd have it well planned out, but if designing such a board it may be worth adding a 6-pin PCIe power header on the expansion board to be powered directly from PSU, and putting some current-limiting circuitry to the Xorro connector to prevent the possibility of shorting the PCIe power lines on the PCIex16 slot to ground (assuming that Xorro has the 12V 75W power supply lines connected as per PCIe spec).
PSUs are easier to replace than Nemos after all.