Please hear my request oh hardware designer god's!

[626Pilot]

I don't know if it would make a difference, since the CPU's entire RAM is 8K. Or is it 4K.

[Eric]

"How to improve your USB transfer speed by increasing the maximum transfer size of 64KB block to 2MB in the Usbstor.sys driver"
Well maby not 2MB but 255KB and expand ringbuffer size to 255 and force flush at 192KB

http://en.ocworkbench.com/tech/how-to-i ... ys-driver/

Haven't have the time to test it, i'm on vacation

That's interesting for disk transfer situations, although larger transfer blocks trade potential throughput for reduced robustness. Poorly shielded cable in a noisy signal environment...the 2M packets are going to require way more error retrys than the 64K packets...you could actually have worse performance in some cases.

It doesn't apply at all to the Ramps/Rambo situation. Remember, it's not a disk drive. It's a device that only has 8K of SRAM. Using transfer blocks of 64K or 2M is just impossible in this instance.

[To be fair, the Arduino processors can be interfaced to external RAM, but that's not being done in this case. If it was, you'd still need to modify both sides of the software to make beneficial use of it.]

[Flateric]

There are far more improvements wrapped up in this hotfix than just that improvement as well. It also claims to improve unspecified abnormalities. Whatever that may mean. And a lengthy list of other things I didn't fully understand nor try too.

[johnoly99]

Flateric,

Your thoughts have been heard, for a while now. In case anyone didn't see or list them, here are some of the up-and-coming developmental electronics hardware boards

Smoothieboard - While it is an ARM based board, firmware still isn't stable, at least any i've seen. Expandability out the @ss, but, little to no following at the moment
4pi - Similar to Smoothieboard, but developed by a reprap giant, Kliment himself.
Arduino DUE compatible RAMPS shield - A makerspace member of mine has been working on porting marlin to a DUE and re-assigning pins.h etc... to get close to working
Beaglebone Black Replicape - Another great concept, havn't seen one in person yet, but have seen a prototype down at ultimachine's bench


There are a few, no-named projects, or un documented attempts as well. For MOST of the above boards, the issue comes down to this:
NO firmware or in-progress

The reason is, I think, that the ARM based solutions are newer, and there are less people in the community/dev pool that can work on them. Look at the history of all the other firmwares out there. Each built upon the previous, but, each started out all hacky, wanky, whatever, and very seldom used, until it became stable/close to stable as the predecessor. I think it'll take another year until firmware exists that will be as reliable as marlin or even repetier.

Also, on the hardware side, there are two camps on the whole driver pluggable issue. i prefer NON pluggable drivers, less heat, less chance for issues. But, replaceable is nice, if you either like to hcak on your machines, or are fat-fisted (like me None of the above mentioned boards are pluggable, all are direct mount.

If I were to have to pick a horse at this very moment to ride away on, I'd say the beaglebone black replicape would be it. Smoothie is in limbo, not sure how trinitylabs is doing atm. Not sure if anyone else is going to pick up the smoothie where TL left off or? The 4pi didn't take off as expected in the reprap community, and I don't think kliment is going to produce them, or at least the same, again. The arduino DUE is a kinda in-between thing, like putting a new modern motor in an old car. Unless you change all the other hardware around it, you got a hotrod you can't hotrod

just my .02,

[Gimbal]

Beaglebone Black Replicape look's right on, with ethernet, think i will check pricing and makeing a few bords, brd files looks to be only double sided return with price if any would be interested (EU)

[Polygonhell]

The replicape is interesting, but it's going to come down to software, the description of the motor driver implementation on the designers blog didn't instill any confidence in me.
My concern with the beaglebone and I have both an original and a black, is that I think TI is selling them at either 0 markup, or minimal profit, just count the number of components on the board, which to me means if they stop production, or decide it's not a market they are interested in, getting another manufacturer to step up will be challenging.

[Flateric]

Of the above products have any of them got delta code in them currently in any way shape or form? Or do we have to wait until it becomes mature and then the delta code is implemented lagging behind the other repraps?

If any of them have delta code implemented in even a base form I would be willing to grab it just to hack on, learn and mess with. I like doing that sorta thing. But I am not so keen to start from nothing and try to create the delta code for it. This is not at all my level of skill or expertise. Experimentation yes, creation from nothing....not so much. Have always been much more of a 3d graphics guy for my entire life even way way back on the apple IIc (fake 3D graphics yes, but it was a good start)

[Polygonhell]

Smoothie supports plugins and I think someone was looking at adding delta kinematics.

[Gimbal]

Hey F just found this:

* Smoothieboard.Rostock - This directory contains a sample config for a
Rostock or Kossel style bot using the most recent Smoothieboard.

https://github.com/arthurwolf/Smoothie/ ... figSamples

[Flateric]

Hey F just found this:

* Smoothieboard.Rostock - This directory contains a sample config for a
Rostock or Kossel style bot using the most recent Smoothieboard.

https://github.com/arthurwolf/Smoothie/ ... figSamples

Smoothie Boards are completely sold out everywhere for the forseeable future too it seems. 3-4 weeks anyways.

I also found the same issue with rumba's.

I did order a beagel bone black however and prepay for the reprap board that is coming for it. But again a few weeks wait atleast on this one too.

Glad I made this thread however, lots of ideas and hardware with good opinions I would never have heard otherwise.

[Gimbal]

Beaglebone:
https://github.com/modmaker/BeBoPr
https://github.com/modmaker/BeBoPr/wiki/BeBoPr-Bridge
https://github.com/modmaker/BeBoPr/wiki/The-BeBoPr-Cape
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic ... s9Bcdpk8gw
http://bb-lcnc.blogspot.se/2013/07/line ... atics.html

[626Pilot]

Another issue with USB on these boards is... Repetier.

Not the firmware, but the HOST!

If you sit on the Manual Control tab, it will sit there polling for position updates over the serial line several times a second, on top of all the other traffic. I finally managed to get my printer to stall for the first time, on a print with loads of curved surfaces. As soon as I switched to the G-Code Editor tab, it didn't do that any more for the rest of the print.

[lordbinky]

Repetier host has a gooey gui eh?

[626Pilot]

The Azteeg X3 can't be ordered with support for bed heat. Are they joking?

[johnoly99]

Flateric,

If you're interested in a smoothieboard, PM me or shoot me an email. I have a few from the last real run of them.