Yes pin 10 was always mandatory. I pulled out the PICs they had on the board, cut all traces in and out and hooked up my own board over the weekend. I wrote a piece of test code to sort of debug some conditions. One was I wrote it to shutdown the processor if the EncoderCounter was less than the XMotorCounter. One counts up/down for every output to the motor, the other counts up/down the encoder, then compares on every iteration. Since I was still getting the code right for couting the encoder, it was losing a pulse once in a while, and it would shut down the processor if I jogged back and forth a few times. On shutdown, the processor would stop all outputs including PWM to the motor, so it was obvious according to the lack of high pitch sound that it had stipped, This is exactly what was going on before that was happening on a regular basis with their processors that drove me to replace them with my own, Like I mentioned before, Mach3 was still sending it pulses, but the controlled for an axis, usually X, would stop running. Sometimes it was Y or Z, but mostly X.
Almost always on Ref home, X would stop and need rebooting the machine. I was usually REF homing at 30%, but had tried others as well. There was something very specific with the Ref home feature that my machine did not like, especially X. It would almost always make grinding sound or gurgling sound as it homed, then in many cases pop the breaker as it either went home, or right after. If it didn't pop the mahcines breaker, it would stop working after homing, and need resetting. One thing I notice is that unless the encoder cbale is sheilded, you can get false triggers. I am just guessing that maybe some motor spikes might have been getting in their encoder lines, which would be a very good explanation.
Nonetheless, I am almost done with my code using step and direction. There are a few outputs left on the processor and I'd like to send those back to the PC for future use. I think Estop is one good use, if a motor's encoder doesn't move enough pulses, it will shut down the processor and hit the estop. Maybe someone has some suggestions on other things to try as well. I am having boards made very to reflect the new processor and sense circuitry. Once I get this all dialed in I think it will be a great controller. There's nothing better than having your own boards, with your own code to mod as needed,
Thanks