Dell 1520 laptop with a parallel Express card

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booski
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Oct 19, 2013 4:46 pm

Dell 1520 laptop with a parallel Express card

Post by booski »

Well, I've had a fun experience this weekend.

The computer I had been using for my machine was an old P4 without HT all in one PC. Worked a treat on 8.04 but was quite buggy in 10.04.
I've got a newer Dell 1520 laptop which was pretty much redundant as the battery doesn't really hold a charge and it's just to big and cumbersome for a laptop when I've got something much smaller and newer to use.

I've been wanting to get rid of the all in one PC for a while because it's ugly and considering it's in my 'desk' area I just don't like the look of it. Also, it's a shame to have a reasonable Laptop sitting there going to waste that could actually be used to backup DVD's and be used for other light processing tasks. With that in mind, I set about setting up a dual boot ubuntu 10.04 on the laptop AGES ago but never actually tested it out on my machine due to not having a parallel port, massive clincher there!

It's got good timing, about 16,000ns which is plenty good enough for the step rate I'm after. I bit the bullet last week and invested in an £18 expresscard to parallel adapter and turned up saturday. To my sheer surprise, it installed flawlessly on ubuntu, gave me a hardware hex address and integrated with LinuxCNC flawlessly and am currently cutting the first circuit board on this new piece of hardware.

Just for those who might be interested, my old machine is now up for sale.
For quality electronic components, visit my store on eBay UK!

Boos Bits - http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Booski-Bits
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Country_Bubba
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Re: Dell 1520 laptop with a parallel Express card

Post by Country_Bubba »

Love it when a plan comes together and works as hoped. :D

Cheers
Art
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booski
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Oct 19, 2013 4:46 pm

Re: Dell 1520 laptop with a parallel Express card

Post by booski »

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For quality electronic components, visit my store on eBay UK!

Boos Bits - http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Booski-Bits
booski
Posts: 51
Joined: Sat Oct 19, 2013 4:46 pm

Re: Dell 1520 laptop with a parallel Express card

Post by booski »

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This is the result of the board milled just now with this setup.

Traces are 0.33mm and those are 0603 resistors on the board with opto isolators and a schmitt inverter.

By the way, this is part of a project for a modular CNC machine board. Much like the RAMPS for GRBL and 3D printers, but this is to have a parallel port, hence the opto couplers and inverter and will be designed to use the cheap a4988 modules. I'm hoping for a small board, much smaller than the TB6560 board I have which is entirely modular, including the input buffer, drivers and power supplies.

I've not yet tested this board yet so it might be a complete flop. I'm just enjoying basking in how awesome it's come out :twisted:
For quality electronic components, visit my store on eBay UK!

Boos Bits - http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Booski-Bits
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