PowerPMAC with UMAC MACRO

[pnewhook]

I have a PowerPMAC system communicating to a UMAC rack over MACRO that contains the ACC24e2a interface cards. I'd like to use the new ACC24e3a cards, but apparently I'd also need to have an updated Macro CPU and ACC5e Macro interface card, is this correct? Any expected release date for this?

 

Thanks!

[Sina.Sattari]

pnewhook,

 

ACC-24E3 series are only supported by Power PMAC CPU since these cards use 32-bit communication bus in contrast with ACC-24E2x series which use 24-bit communication bus.

 

MACRO CPU units that we have available at the moment (MACRO8 and MACRO16) are designed based upon the 24-bit communication bus and can only support 24-bit communication on their backplane which means ACC-24E3 series can not be used with these CPUs.

 

You can still use ACC-24E3 cards in the main rack where you have the Power PMAC CPU.

 

Regards,

[pnewhook]

MACRO CPU units that we have available at the moment (MACRO8 and MACRO16) are designed based upon the 24-bit communication bus and can only support 24-bit communication on their backplane which means ACC-24E3 series can not be used with these CPUs.

Thanks for the clarification Sina,

Unfortunately I have too many axis to control to fit them all into one rack, forcing me to do multiple racks over MACRO.

 

So will the MACRO16 cards be updated to support the 32bit communication? Is there a timeframe? I see there is already an ACC-5e3 for the other side of the communications.

 

 

[KEJR]

This won't help if you already bought them and installed them, but why not use MACRO drives instead of axis cards?

 

 

[pnewhook]

Well, I would need 16 of these, so space and cost wise the axis cards are far more efficient. Also I have to use an external amplifier as the motors I'm using cannot be driven directly by DeltaTau, so the amplifier capacity of the MACRO drive would be wasted.

 

Regardless, that doesn't get me to the new DSPGATE3 ASIC which is where I want to go.

[KEJR]

Well, I would need 16 of these, so space and cost wise the axis cards are far more efficient. Also I have to use an external amplifier as the motors I'm using cannot be driven directly by DeltaTau, so the amplifier capacity of the MACRO drive would be wasted.

 

Regardless, that doesn't get me to the new DSPGATE3 ASIC which is where I want to go.

 

Have you looked at the Copley Macro amplifiers? I'm using them now and they seem to work very well and interface to a broad variety of motors (we are using Sanyo Denki's with 17 bit encoders). We aren't using any hardware triggering or anything like that to warrant the ASIC chips but I thought some of that could be done over macro too? We are going the other way and trying to get into Macro and Ethercat and eliminate the axis cards completely. Anyhow, good luck with your application.

 

KEJR

 

 

 

 

[pnewhook]

Thanks for the info. Looks interesting but we can only use the custom amplifiers that are matched to our motors.