Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: Steve_B on August 02, 2009, 11:29:22 AM
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I have an old 2D system that I am wanting to convert to Mach. It uses 2 parallel cards to steppers like Mach & I would like to test the signals & maybe use my breakout board that I have on the system now. I have purchased & used a 9 pin serial tester with LED's in the past but have not found a 25 pin test plug with LED's to test a parallel signal. Is there a test device with LED's I can plug into a 25 pin parallel card to send a signal & find out the current pin assignment so I can use my present BOB?
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I just made my own up, got a plug, soldered 3mm LEDs to each I/O pin and Gnd (actually just used the shell as the Gnd) Works great when testing out peoples XMLs as I can see at a glance what is what. A better way I suppose would be to route a PCB up but that takes too much time :D
Hood
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After Hood's comment I searched a long time & found this. No LED but this saves alot of work.
http://www.winford.com/products/brk25mf.php
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Thats just a lazy way :D
Hood
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Thanks Hood for the direction....... I am new to this & every little bit helps. I sure want the switchover from Indexer to Mach to go smooth.
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IF someone wanted to develpoe this it would be nice to have LEDS for each active pin on the port and a set of push test switches to test the input side in mach .
Pluse the output to lite the led for output board side and touch the switch to lite up the mach led on the input side
(;-0 TP
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One of my BOBs has an led at each pin. Makes the board pretty big, but I have found the leds to be invaluable. For inputs, you can simply take 5V from the BOB and touch the input pins on the BOB and see which boxes light up on MACH diag screen.
For the money, I woudln't even bother doing research or making something up.
http://www.cnc4pc.com/Store/osc/product_info.php?cPath=33&products_id=49 (http://www.cnc4pc.com/Store/osc/product_info.php?cPath=33&products_id=49)
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I have 2 parallel ports. How do you read both? I guess 1 at a time?
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1 more question? How do I tell the difference between a CW CCW & Line move while testing signals?
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Cw or CCW is easy, either the LED is lit or its not, depends on which way you have the active low setting and motors wired as to which is which.
Not sure what you mean by Line, if step then you will either see the LED light or see it dimming depending on the active low setting you have.
Most BOBs have LEDs on them, or the two I have anyway. I was thinking you were needing something just for testing purposes on your desktop computer without having anything else hooked up.
Hood
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Sorry Hood... On the CW CCW I meant how does it look different than a G01 (line). Does a CW CCW pulse use a different parallel port pin? I have a really old system I am having to reverse engineer. No real good schematics.
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Hi, Steve
Direction is controlled with the dir. pin being ether held high or low on each axis then the step pin is pulsed to move the axis the desired amount.
3 axises 6 pins and common Ground.
Chip
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I have 2 parallel ports. How do you read both? I guess 1 at a time?
Note that I said ONE OF my BOBs. I also have one of Peter Homann's new BOBs, but it does not have LEDs . . . . consequently it is very small . . . so advantages are traded. For two ports, you need two BOBs.
One exception I am aware of is a product called 'smooth stepper'. There is a section on this forum dedicated to the product. I don't know much about it, but apparently (among other advantages) it replaces two parallel ports with a USB connection.