PC Hardware Requirements for Artisan-CNC:

Artisan-CNC is a high-performance real-time software package. As such, it requires completely

uninterrupted and unshared access to all PC hardware. In addition, many of Artisan’s core routines
were written in the early 1990’s; when PC hardware was almost all still 100% IBM compatible. One
advantage of such a long-developed package is that it’s quite stable and debugged. One disadvantage is
that it is sensitive to some of today’s non-compatible hardware.

However, there’s plenty of compatible PC-hardware around. So long as you follow our guidelines for
choosing PC hardware, you should not have any compatibility problems. Note that we cannot provide
tech-support for any control which is not configured to these guidelines. You are welcome to try non-
recommended setups, but please do so on a “test” machine; i.e. not something you make your living on.

Artisan-CNC requires PC hardware that’s 100% compatible to the original IBM-AT standard. Much of
today’s PC hardware is fine, but there are a few things which are not “100% IBM AT compatible”. This
document gives details on those items.

Before buying or building your PC, be SURE you’re getting: (these are requirements; not options)

· Regular VGA video card, with no more than 4mb “video ram”; 1mb is best.
· Do NOT use any “AGP video”! Neither on the mainboard or separate AGP card. NO AGP.
· Minimum of 150mhz CPU. We strongly recommend 300mhz or faster.
· 4mb RAM minimum. 16mb is a good size; and dirt cheap these days.
· At least one standard full-length 16-bit ISA bus “slot”, running at 8mhz.
· Use only a reliable PC for CNC controls! Do not ‘overclock’. Be conservative.

In fact, the best possible advice for all aspects of your PC setup is to: be conservative.

Over 90% of all reported Artisan problems turn out not to be Artisan ‘bugs’at all…

Rather, we eventually find that they’re PC or PC-setup related. The three largest sources of trouble are:

n Installing NON-recommended “drivers” in the DOS environment

n Installing any other “cards”; besides the VGA and IF16 card. No sound-card, no joystick-card, etc..
n Incompatible VGA cards; especially those with more than 4mb of videoRAM.

It’s important to realize that these PC-related issues tend to cause “bizarre” problems. Almost always,
these problems are only happening at one site, and are non-reproducible at a friend’s, or at Ah-ha. If
you’re having any problem of this nature, first suspect something with your PC or its setup.

Video Cards:

Artisan is sensitive to VGA cards which exceed the IBM VGA standard. Many of the latest VGA cards
do.

To run 4.0 properly, your computer must NOT have "AGP video". The VGA card must be a PCI or ISA or
VL bus type of card.

The VGA card should have 4mb of video ram" or less. This might be hard to find on current-model VGA
cards; however, there are millions of older but brand-new 'surplus' cards on the market which do meet this
spec. A used card is just fine too; so long as it's not ‘flaky’.

CPU Chip:
4.0 requires more "cpu horsepower" than older versions of Artisan-CNC. It will run fine on a 150mhz or
faster cpu. Whatever the max step rate of 3.1x was, the 4.0 max rate will be about 60% of that, on the
same CPU. Artisan-4.0 really likes a 300-450mhz pentium or K6.

n the faster the CPU, the smoother the step-pulse-train.

n the faster the CPU, the shorter the pauses between g-codes; i.e. less tool-marking; shorter job-time

“486” PC’s:

Although 4.0 will "run" on 486's, the maximum step rate will be quite low, and the step pulse-train will be
a
little 'ragged'; possibly causing stalls or other reports of strange "problems", or "bugs".

'Official' type note:

Because of these issues, we can NOT support 4.0 on 486's. If you contact us for support; we will ask you
to re-install the software on a minimum 150mhz pentium class CPU PC, and re-check for problems;
before we can proceed with support.

Notwithstanding the above ‘official’ position, there are a few people successfully running 4.0 on
reasonably fast 486's like a DX4-100. Their secret is that they don’t ‘push’ things; they set their Artisan
max rates and G-code feedrates very conservatively; no extra cards; no ‘drivers’ whatsoever; reliable
mainboard; etc..

Motherboard Setup:

· DISABLE ALL ON-BOARD EXTRA's, like USB, infrared, SCSI interface if unused, etc.
· BLOW OUT the DUST every 3 months !! Keep the CPU heatsink clean.

BIOS Setup: (on most PC’s, hit ‘del’ before PC boots)

· Disable all Power-Management functions !!

· Set Serial and Parallel ports to 'plain-jane' original IBM types; i.e. NOT as “enhanced parallel” etc..
· Set ISA bus parameters for: 8mhz, 2 wait states on ’16 bit I/O’.
· Use conservative RAM/refresh speed settings. Usually, “autoconfigure” is best RAM setup option.

PC Hardware Summary:

· Get a “plain jane” motherboard. It’s more reliable and compatible than “the latest and greatest”
· But get a fast CPU, 150 is ok, 233 is lots better, 300-500 is best.
· 4mb RAM is plenty for most applications. If you're going to run G-code files larger than 500K, then
get more RAM. 16mb will likely be more than adequate.
· Get a standard PCI or VLbus VGA card, with no more than 4mb vidram. Do NOT use AGP video
· Set up the PC, and the BIOS, conservatively; per the above detailed recommendations
· Hard Disk: almost any IDE drive will work...100mb on up.
· NO other cards in the PC, besides the VGA and the IF card.
· You can probably get away with a modem card, but if so, disable one of the 'on board' serial ports on
the mainboard, and set the modem up as com2. Trying to run the modem as com3 may produce a
port or IRQ conflict; and create 'bizarre' seeming occasional crashes.
· And of course, as previously mentioned, run a super-CLEAN DOS environment. NO device drivers.
Basically, a good quality but plain-jane pentium mainboard, with no 'on board' hardware except parallel
and serial ports, with a plain-jane PCI VGA card <4mb videoram and no other cards, 16mb main ram,
and a 233mhz pentium; makes a pretty good Artisan platform. And is real cheap to buy these days.

For the smoothest fastest motion, follow all the above, except get a Pentium-II or III mainboard with a
450mhz cpu. Remember to be sure it has at least one full-length standard 16-bit ISA bus slot.

Overview of Artisan-CNC DOS Environment Requirements:

Artisan-CNC is a high-performance real-time software package. As such, it requires completely

uninterrupted and unshared access to all PC hardware. The only way to assure this is to install
Artisan into a ‘clean’ DOS 6.22 or higher installation. The ‘typical’ PC installation is not clean.

Most PC’s have several ‘driver’ files which are loaded every time the computer boots up; and
these drivers do interfere with Artisan. If you leave these drivers installed, they are very likely to
produce erratic, hard-to-reproduce, ‘strange’ problems; which we will not be able to troubleshoot
for you.

Examples of these ‘drivers’: Mouse driver; Disk-caching program (‘smartdrive’); Memory

managers, including EMM386 (the only exception is HIMEM.SYS); Network-driver, disk
doubler, etc., etc.. These files are usually needed for ‘office type’ software, like CAD, Windows,
etc., but they interfere with Artisan-CNC. They MUST be removed (or disabled) before running.

The files CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT are ‘setup’ files which are present in the boot
directory( C:\) on the hard drive on every DOS PC. These two setup files contain the instructions
for loading drivers at boot time. To prevent the device-drivers from loading, you need to remove
the lines in the setup files which call the drivers.

You can accomplish this task in one of two ways:

A) EDIT the existing setup files (on the PC), by adding ‘rem’ in front of all lines that are to be
disabled; or…

B) REPLACE the old CONFIG and AUTOEXEC files with clean ones. To run programs other
than CNC, you’ll probably want to switch back to the original CONFIG and AUTOEXEC.

On your Artisan diskettes, we’ve provided clean CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files
which don’t call any improper drivers. Modify the existing boot files (with rem) to leave active
only the same lines that are in our files; or replace the existing boot files with the ones provided.
The next page includes a complete step-by-step procedure for replacing them.

See the Artisan-CNC 4.0 Installation document on our website for more software installation
and setup details. www.ahha.com