Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: dighsx on July 15, 2006, 04:11:20 PM
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I've got a strange one here. I'll be running Mach3 and then out of the blue the Pulse Frequency will drop to 100 and the machine stops (well it's moving be very very very slowly). If I then close the program and bring it back up things run fine for a while. Normally my Pulse Frequency is around 25353 and stays pretty steady. My Time to Int jumps around from about 8 to 11.
The other thing that's odd is if I bring up Mach3 and just let it sit there (no machine or controllers on) after a while it'll do drop to 100.
So I figured it was the computer, I made sure nothing else was running and it still did it. Then I loaded Mach3 onto a faster computer (2ghz P4) and just let Mach3 sit there and it did the same thing?
I'm stumped.
Take it easy,
Jay
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On other thing. I just tested it in Mach2 and it does the same thing. I just let it sit for a bit and it dropped to 100
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Are we talking about Desktop or Laptop processors here.
Graham.
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Desktop. One's a PIII 550 and ones a P4 2ghz.
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I think you need to do some optimization... There is a link for it on the Mach Support page here :
http://www.machsupport.com/optimisation%20XP.txt
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I'm running Win2K but I did as many as the optimisations as I could and still no luck. I then reinstalled the software thinking that might help, but no luck there either.
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What do you get when you run a driver test?
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It seems to run the driver test fine. Here's a screen shot
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That is not that good :( You may need to reinstall windows... :'(
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It's a fresh OS on that machine. The thing I don't understand is I've tried to run it on a P4 2ghz and I get the same thing. But then I run it on my main PC, which is also, a P4 2ghz but a different make and it works fine. On the two machines that it doesn't work on I've tried switching between standard bi-directional to ECP to ECP+EPP mode in the bios but nothing seems to make any difference. I'd go out and buy a new cheap pc but I'm a little worried that it still won't work.
Just as a side note: the P3 550ghz is an old Dell and the P4 2ghz is a home built machine. The PC that is does work on is (the other P4 2ghz) is also a home built machine but it's got an Intel motherboard.
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Make sure the speeds on your network cards are not set to auto.
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That would do it! do you have on-board graphics?
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I have seen something similar on every computer I have tried Mach2 and 3 on.
All of them will run close to the selected kernal speed, but every once in a while the freq will drop by about 70-200htz (by, not to!) for a second or two. 45k was worse than 25k kernals, but all kernal speeds did it.. When this happens the mill stumbles but usually is able to keep going (except for when running in 45k kernal, in which case the mill usually stumbled and then error out). The computers have been a laptop P3m 1ghz, a desktop AMD XP3000+, and a desktop Intel P3 2.4ghz.
The faster the machine, the less the freq dropped.. but they all did it. One was a clean install, the others were from various walks of life but strong running computers.
I fixed the problem tho. G100. Never a glitch since! :) :) :)
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Could you please see if you have anything in MSconfig? uncheck everything under the startup tab and I think it will work!
Also turn off the screen saver
Thank you
Brian
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I think I fixed the problem. As I was testing I noticed it seemed to drop to 100 after a fixed amount of time (around 20-25 minutes). I had all the screen saver and power mgnt. stuff turned off in windows so I was a little stumped. Then it occurred to me to check the BIOS and see if there was some power mgnt. settings in there. And what do you know. So I turned off all the BIOS level power stuff and it seems to be working now. I'm not sure why this worked because in the BIOS it was set to allow the OS to have control over the power settings by default but there was a time out that was set to 30 minutes on the hard drives. Maybe the BIOS and the OS were having a little war over who controls what and it was messing the system up.
I still can't figure out why it doesn't run right on the P4 2ghz. But right now I really don't care because the P3 550ghz is the machine I control the cnc machine.
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Great!
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Thanks everyone for all the help tracking this down.