My Acorn arrived, Woo Hoo!

[DICKEYBIRD]

Hello gentlemen, I received the Acorn today; safe & sound thanks to the good packing job.

It'll be later this week before I'm able to connect it to the one axis I have up & running on my mill project & have a couple questions before I get started:

1) Is it dangerous to the board to connect it to a Win7 PC that is possibly below the minimum specs listed? It will be used for testing purposes with only simple linear moves to set the stepper drive & motor tuning. No complex moves whatsoever.

2) If I do use this PC to load the software & license, etc, will it be possible to de-activate it on that PC and install it on a spiffy new PC down the road?

3) I plan to get a touchscreen later on; will I be able to change the software that was previously configured for standard monitor usage?

Milton D.
(Neophyte squirrel & Acorn user);)

[cnckeith]

1) Is it dangerous to the board to connect it to a Win7 PC that is possibly below the minimum specs listed? It will be used for testing purposes with only simple linear moves to set the stepper drive & motor tuning. No complex moves whatsoever.

<< the CNC12 software is not compatible with windows 7, use a windows 10 CNCPC, see CNCPC requirements here. http://www.centroidcnc.com/cnc_pc_perfo ... ments.html >>>


2) If I do use this PC to load the software & license, etc, will it be possible to de-activate it on that PC and install it on a spiffy new PC down the road?

<< the license is tied to the Acorn board not the CNCPC, you can install the CNC12 software on any number of PC's you want, the CNC12 software uses the license to "look" for the Acorn board that it is matched to when the system boots up and is connected to the acorn board via the Ethernet connection. if license doesn't match serial of acorn board (for instance if you had several acorn boards and got the licence numbers mixed up) then the cnc12 software simply runs in the "Free" version mode, so you can still run the machine etc..until you get things straight. >>>

3) I plan to get a touchscreen later on; will I be able to change the software that was previously configured for standard monitor usage? << yes, very easy, the touch screen setting is in the wizard., you can use a mouse to click the buttons on the control panel or use an Xkeys pad to control the machine until you get a touch screen monitor, look at marty's post on touch screens that he is using and start shopping, its invaluable tool>>

[DICKEYBIRD]

<< the CNC12 software is not compatible with windows 7, use a windows 10 CNCPC, see CNCPC requirements here. http://www.centroidcnc.com/cnc_pc_perfo ... ments.html >>>

Thanks for the speedy reply Keith.

Ouch, that puts a hitch in my giddy-up. Wasn't planning to buy a new PC right away.

Has this been changed?



Might save some misunderstanding down the road if the add was changed to say "Windows 10 only." Some of us old folks aren't wanting to go to Win10 until we have to.

Oh well, it's time to go to SWMBO with hat in hand!

(Not really, just need to sell some more work & fill up the ol' hobby piggy-bank.)

[cnckeith]

hello. yes since adding new features specific to Acorn in CNC12, the low level software running those features rely on built in Windows 10 capabilities. This is also true for the rest of the Centroid CNC controller line up (Oak, and Allin1DC based systems running CNC12)
fyi...if you have a windows 7 or 8 PC you can still get a free upgrade to windows 10, google it you'll find there are two ways to still get it. I love win7 as i have run it now for quite some time on my workstation and but i am warming up to Win10 as i use it more and more everyday and have tweaked it to my liking, I found that it is faster than 7 all things being equal.
Also, as marty has shown in other posts there are several good low cost windows 10 PC's that are perfect for Acorn CNC controller use that you can buy or build yourself.
While talking about CNCPC's....I also do recommend dedicating a PC to CNC control use. Once you have the CNCPC all setup and running well with the machine tool, it should just stay that way so you can always just walk out to the garage and power up the machine and start making parts!

attached is the latest Acorn Overview sheet. Please refresh your browser and possibly clear the image cache to see the latest information on the Acorn web page.

[DICKEYBIRD]

OK thanks for the clarification Keith. There's a deal out there somewhere and I'll find it!