Pulse engine noise

[umka]

What can I do to reduce the "Noise" on the parallel port test? I have time variation of 9-12us when using the pulse test engine. I am using a machine with XP Pro, Intel E4600 CPU, 1G ram. I have done the XP optimization but with no improvement.

The system will only be used for Mach3, no Internet or anything. Is there more I can do to try and improve the pulse engines consistency? The Mach3 config PDF doesnt actually say what to do if your system responds with spikes(unless I just can see it in the doc).

[Hood]

Have a look in the BIOS and see if there are any power saving options, I seem to remember Intel CPU based motherboards can have these options.
A PCI parallel port may help you but they can also have issues unless they are true parallel ports, most are but some are not.
Hood

[Tweakie.CNC]

If you have onboard graphics this can cause problems. Some have disabled the onboard graphics in BIOS when they have fitted a PCI type graphics card.

Tweakie.