Newbee needs help

[pfact]

HI guys,

I can't get Mach 3 to talk to my Zenbot CNC, I am hoping someone out there can help me out. Notably, I am not great with the PC (I am a MAc programmer).

I am using a 3 year old HP Pavilion with an AMD 32 bit processor running Vista. I installed a NetMos PCI parallel card and the most recent Vista driver for it. The best I have managed is an occasional click of the motors when I turn the computer on.

I have installed the memory override. The parallel card is set as port 1, I located the port address and entered that into the pins and ports panel in Mach 3. The only thing I am not certain about are the pin numbers. I also enabled the motor outputs.

One other thing, I have several times copied the license I got from Zenbot into the Mach 3 folder but the program doesn't switch from the demo version.

What am I doing wrong?

Phil

[Jeff_Birt]

I installed a NetMos PCI parallel card and the most recent Vista driver for it.

This is the key sentence. If you had to install a driver than the card is emulating a printer port, it is not a 'real' hardware parallel port. In other words you can use it for a printer but you can't twiddle individual bits on it like Mach does. You can either find a PCI parallel port card that says 'no driver required' or go with something like a SmoothStepper: http://www.soigeneris.com/SmoothStepper-details.aspx (my website)

[pfact]

Thanks Jeff,

I just ordered a smooth stepper and LPH26 to DB25 cable adaptor.

Can you tell me what pin settings I should be using in the config for Mach 3?

Phil

[Jeff_Birt]

You'll use the XML that Zenbot provides but you'll need to change the motion control device to the SmoothStepper. I've detailed how to do this in the PDF called: Installation Tips , that you can get here: http://www.soigeneris.com/Documentation-content.aspx#SmoothStepper The manual and driver/plug-in can be downloaded from the same page. Normally I email this information but thought I would post it here in case someone was reading this thread in the future looking for the same information.

[pfact]

Thanks Jeff

I received an email indicating the smooth stepper was shipped this afternoon.

Phil

[pfact]

Jeff

So far I can't get to step 1 - my computer will not install the USB driver. Can you tell me where the files need to go?

Phil

[Jeff_Birt]

Look on page 6 of the Installation Tips guide, toward the bottom and follow the directions for upgrading a driver: http://www.soigeneris.com/Document/Installing_and_Configuring_the_SmoothStepper.pdf Vista and Windows make it a bit harder to manually specify a driver to manually but once you learn the trick it is pretty easy.

[pfact]

Jeff

Your solution only works if the driver has been previously installed.

There is a bug in Vista such that when I ask the device installer to browse for the driver the driver is treated as a hidden file and you can not open subfolders.

The only solution is to manually place the driver files in their appropriate destinations.

Thanks for all the ehlp,

Phil

[Jeff_Birt]

I've done this several times actually. When you plug-in a USB device, even if the driver is not successfully installed it will show up in Device Manager. While there is no driver loaded yet you can go through the 'update driver' procedure just fine. I'm not sure what problem your seeing with the driver installer not seeing the driver 'inf'  files. It might be that Vista has blocked them as they were downloaded. I've had that happen on one particular file, not related to SS, that was hard to figure out. If you right click on the file and select properties you should be able to see if it is blocked or not.

If you still have trouble just drop me a line at birt_j@soigeneris.com and perhaps we can arrange a time where I can remote into your computer so we can both see what is happening at the same time.

[pfact]

Jeff,

I sent you an email

Phil