Laptop requirements with Mach 3

[Tweakie.CNC]

Don't start me wondering about the differences between the D600 and the D800 - It has taken me a whole 5 months to get my head around the functional differences between my old desktop and my cheap'o laptop.

Has this possible solution helped anyone yet ? - if so please post a reply.

[Perfo]

What about pin voltages? I believe a lot of lap tops don't give out the full 5v on the parallel port pins more like 3.3v which is just in the spec for a TTL 1 signal but not enough for some input devices. I've tried to controlling some home build multiplexers with my old lap top in the past (Toshiba) and this has been one of the problems. I ended up using pull up resistors on the ports and inverting the 1' signal so that the device took a o to be a 1 (if this makes sense). I have a different problem trying to get driver test to run on my lap top. I've seen a screen shot of a pals PC and his mach3 icons are grey scale with a grey background mine are coloured but his works and mine doesn't does anyone know why there is a difference?
Thanks.

[Tweakie.CNC]

Quite right about pin voltage but whether it works or not is Dependant on the tolerance of the driver card used (mine is a 'stepmaster' and this works just fine). The previous posts relate to running the driver test and disabling the ACPI driver to smoothe things out a little. Some thing in life will probably always remain a mystery though.

[Perfo]

Yep if you use a breakout board with opto isolators they do a pretty good job at cleaning up the signals the other way is to run the signals through a schmitt trigger. Sorry I digress

[jasonjetski]

Hi, This is my first post.
 I just wanted to let you know the post bellow made my IBM T40 laptop able to run Mach3 without any problems.
 Thanks for the help,I thought I was going to need to buy another PC.
 Jason

Since my post in February I have been wondering just why my Dell Inspiron (cheap but good spec) Laptop did not work well with Mach3 whereas an old (low spec) desktop worked so well. The answer has been found in the posting by 'DaveC' at :- http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,3378.0.html.

An extract from his post is as follows :-

The secret is .... disable the ACPI driver!
Open the device manager and find the 'Computer' icon.
Click on the plus next to that and you will see something like Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) computer. Chose the 'update driver' option and select 'Standard PC' as a replacement.
Windows demands a reboot after this, and a lot of the hardware had to be 'rediscovered' and reinstalled (all used drivers it knew about already, so was painless), another reboot for good measure and now it works flawlessly.

Thanks to DaveC my Dell Inspiron now works beautifully with Mach3 and I have every confidence it will solve all the issues mentioned by others (unfortunately not Dave's latitude D800 it would seem) in the above posts.

Tweakie.

[Tweakie.CNC]

Glad you got it sorted Jason.

This forum has certainly helped me resolve a lot of issues and also taught me a great deal about CNC in general.

[RICH]

HI All,
Use a NEC Versa with Windows XP2 and only 400 mhz and 512 memory usiing PP. It's dedicated to CNC and have no problem at all. Yes it's slow, but it still is solid, and good grief don't use the video camera with it.

The DELL Latitude only works  if I use the smoothStepper with it. I never used it other than testing and that was with all the virus protection etc on it.

BTW, try running your laptops without the battery / use AC adapter when doing the driver test as it makes a difference.
Don't play with your mouse either when runninig the driver test. Same goes for when running a program.

The Dell Optiplex with xp2 /3gig / 2 gig memory, on board graphics, dedicated cnc pc ( sorry not a laptop ) can't be used without the SS. Spent more hours "optimizing it" than you can ever imagine trying to use it without the SS. Just thought i would mention it.

Frankly, as told manny times, you should have a dedicated pc for CNC work. Don't know what laptop i would buy today,
if i had to, but probably would have the SS on it in a heart beat and not waste any time fooling around.

RICH

[Tweakie.CNC]

Good advice Rich - I agree with all of that.

[jasonjetski]

Hi,
 I have done this and my laptop seams to run Mach3 great.
 One thing Iam not too sure about is that now the laptop takes 3-4 minutes to start up and sometimes,I need to turn it off and try to start it again.
 The other thing I noticed is that when I shut the laptop down.I do it the normal way and then the screen comes up saying "It is safe to turn your computer off now"
 Then I just push the power button and it switches off.
 Does anyone have any hints on how to make these changes back to how they were and still be able to use Mach3?
 Thanks in advance Jason.

Hi, This is my first post.
 I just wanted to let you know the post bellow made my IBM T40 laptop able to run Mach3 without any problems.
 Thanks for the help,I thought I was going to need to buy another PC.
 Jason

Since my post in February I have been wondering just why my Dell Inspiron (cheap but good spec) Laptop did not work well with Mach3 whereas an old (low spec) desktop worked so well. The answer has been found in the posting by 'DaveC' at :- http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,3378.0.html.

An extract from his post is as follows :-

The secret is .... disable the ACPI driver!
Open the device manager and find the 'Computer' icon.
Click on the plus next to that and you will see something like Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) computer. Chose the 'update driver' option and select 'Standard PC' as a replacement.
Windows demands a reboot after this, and a lot of the hardware had to be 'rediscovered' and reinstalled (all used drivers it knew about already, so was painless), another reboot for good measure and now it works flawlessly.

Thanks to DaveC my Dell Inspiron now works beautifully with Mach3 and I have every confidence it will solve all the issues mentioned by others (unfortunately not Dave's latitude D800 it would seem) in the above posts.

Tweakie.

[Tweakie.CNC]

Hi Jason,

As far as I am aware you will have to finally shut the computer down using the on/off button from now on, it won't be automatic as it was (a small price to pay - proving that every thing is a compromise).

As far as start-up is concerned, I have no idea - mine starts up just as quickly as it did before.

Regards,

Tweakie.