I am back to playing with computers again as well as the HB2 router. The router itself is fully functional but it is one of those projects that will never be finished. I just keep trying new features.
The computer is a necessary tool in running the CNC program (MACH3). That is what makes the HB2 do its thing. My baby computer died, That computer I was going to leave in place for Taig CNC operation. I have been using the ASUS (The black computer see in the recent pictures.) box for both CNC machines.
I have ordered the parts to make a new home for the good parts left over from the dead machine. I have chosen an AMD Athalon X2 64 bit very low (45 watt) processor. The case is also very small. I will show it all after I have it assembled.
What I plan to do is use openSUSE Linux for the operating system. I will leave a small amount of space to boot Windows XP for the MACH3 operation. That is exactly what I have done here with the ASUS CNC box. I am writing this in the Linux boot section of the computer. BTW open SUSE loaded into this machine very clean with zero issues on the very first try.
I have no worry about contaminating the WIN XP operation environment I use to run MACH3. Everything that can be turned off not related to CNC is off. Yes, I could dual boot with two versions of Win XP but I happen to like LINUX and especially the openSUSE distro.
The openSUSE Linux I installed is the 64 bit version which is where it is all happening these days. The best part is it is absolutely free. So is Fedora and Ubuntu. There are a lot of Linux OS choices these days but I still need the MS version for some things.