NCBOX - LinuxCNC image download

The NCBOX-189 is a very small footprint x86 computer which can be used for a CNC controller

NCBox-189 CNC machine controller

The NCBox-189 is a complete computer, which is especially designed for CNC machine controller come with 2 parallel ports easy connect to your stepper driver, 
NCBox-189 support Microsoft Windows with the Mach3 CNC software and Linux with the LinuxCNC software, makes your CNC machine easiest install and control.

Vortex86MX+ Processor
Onboard 1GB DDR2
Integrated Graphics VGA
10/100 Ethernet, USB 2.0
2 Parallel ports
DC 8V-24V Power Input
Dimensions : 115 x 115 x 35 mm
MACH3 and LinuxCNC compatible

More information from the makers RoBoard http://www.roboard.com/ncbox-189.html

In collaboration with Anthony from DMP I got a special kernel which supports the ethernet chip to work with Ubuntu 8.04
Then I built magma realtime and Linuxcnc against it

All required files have now been compiled into a single bootable disk image.
This image contains the 2.6.30-vortex86mx-rtai networking enabled kernel and has realtime and linuxcnc built.
All development libraries etc have been left in, so that subsequent versions of linuxcnc can be built in situ

You can download the image from here, it is large (1.65GB) and hosted on a small server, so you may be well advised to use wget or similar that supports reconection.
Disk Image

Once downloaded extract to its full 5GB size with bunzip2 NCBOX-8.04-2.6.30-vortex86mx-rtai-lcnc-2.5.2.img.bz2

Then prepare an 8GB CF card in a card reader attached to your normal computer (not the NCBOX) , or make a 8GB partition at the root (partition 1) of a larger CF card
The NCBOX will only boot from partition 1 of the card, so do not put it elsewhere.
It must be formatted with ext2

Then from the directory containing the expanded disk image
copy the disk image to the card - be very carefull and very sure of what your CF card address is, or you could wipe your HDD
The CF card must NOT be mounted

dd if=./NCBOX-8.04-2.6.30-vortex86mx-rtai-lcnc-2.5.2.img of=/dev/sdx1
where x is the letter of the CF card device

This will take a long time, exact time depends upon the speed of your system

Once complete, just put the card in the NCBOX and boot from it

The default user is ncbox and the password is linuxcnc

The root account has been activated, but you cannot log in as root, the password is the same

On logging in you will enter a icewm session with 10 workspaces. ( Ctrl Alt Left / Right arrow to move between them)
Open the menu (Windows key or Ctrl Esc) and select top item rxvt terminal

Just type in linuxcnc and you are away - there are no menus (unless you make some, edit the menu in /etc/X11/icewm/).

If for some reason you cannot live without the slow clunky gnome window manager, select it from the Options menu on the login screen