sorry, I know this topic is hashed so many times... and I've read up a fair amount... but I still have questions.
 
Have been running my machine for a 2+ years just being careful never to bounce it off the boundaries and now I've decided I want to setup my machine to be able to consistently go to center.

so... I've got home switches setup on my machine.  looking at the debug screen I have yellow boxes for all 3 axis.  If I manually move my machine to trigger the x switch (for instance) I can see the yellow box goes black.  sm with y and z.
I have not set soft limits yet... because I have no idea what direction the machine is going to move when I hit ref all home.

so q: my z axis only has a switch for the up position... how can I confirm that when I try to home this it isn't going to bury my router collet into my spoil board?  should I just start it with the z home switch triggered and if it moves hit my stop button?

q2: I saw that for parallel port there is a setup screen for the home switches... sure would be nice if it would let me test there... but again it is apparently only for parallel port setups?  Is there somewhere else I can test my setup or is it just going to be a leap of faith here?

q3: ref all home - i would assume hitting this it is going to move my machine until it triggers the home switches... AND THEN IT WILL SET ALL AXIS TO ZERO AUTOMAGICALLY?

q4: assuming I home the machine as is... I have not set any offsets... I would assume I should home it... manually drive to trigger the opposite switch, take the measurement from mach3 and divide by 2... and set an offset of that?

any/all help, advice, pitfalls you can illuminate would be appreciated!

so... for the record I figured out how to get things to home... so I'm almost home.  at this point... my x axis homes, sets it to zero, and moves .5 off of that.  Great.
my z axis homes but is set to +6.45 and my y axis is set to 32.45?  I want these where they are (z=top, x=left, y=front) but I want them set to zero at these positions... if anyone can guide me here it'd be apprecaited.

ok, well... give a monkey a typewriter and he'll eventually write shakespear.  this monkey figured it all out on his own.  thanks

so... for the record I figured out how to get things to home... so I'm almost home.  at this point... my x axis homes, sets it to zero, and moves .5 off of that.  Great.
my z axis homes but is set to +6.45 and my y axis is set to 32.45?  I want these where they are (z=top, x=left, y=front) but I want them set to zero at these positions... if anyone can guide me here it'd be apprecaited.

OK, I'm sinking in this boat. I purchased a used CNC milling machine with a PMDX-126 BOB running MACH 4. when I got it set up, I couldn't get the steppers to move with keyboard. I got it to move thanks to Steve Stallings at PMDX support. I'm not sure while going through configurations, I reset something to lose that link...

Fast forward, I installed home switches on my X, Y and Z axes and plugged in soft limits on the X and Y axes.

My BOB shows limit switches operational, however, while manually moving it, it didn't stop moving while going beyond the limit...now I'm definitely paranoid about running it under power to home as I don't know if it'll stop.

I have attached some pics of settings as is right now.

Is there a place where I put in the "bounce back" distance?

Is there anything missing as far as checks, numbers, etc?

Thanks in advance...