Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: fast89 on January 02, 2019, 03:13:26 PM
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I realize this has probably been hashed to death. I like windows 7 better except for one problem. If the machine sits idle for too long early in the day, mach3 stops communicating with the B.O.B. or it looses the charge pump or something like that. (parallel ports) I have several machines with win7 and they all do it. Of course i've disabled the screensaver, sleep function and all that stuff but they all still do this if they sit too long. If they keep running parts all morning, they are fine. Windows xp doesn't have this problem but it is getting more difficult to load xp on newer computers with solid state drives. I've read that it is related to mach3's parallel port driver but no one has solved it. Can anyone shed some light on this. Are there earlier versions of mach3 that do not do this?
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Hi,
I have a little dual core Atom mini-ITX single board PC for my machine. When I first got it I was using two parallel ports
and had the same problem you've described. I did find a solution but its now about 5-6 years ago and I've forgotten just what it is.
I'm thinking that if the parallelport card is on a PCI slot and I think the PCI bus has a power saving/sleep setting....
Craig
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My ports are on pci/pcie slots. I have not found power saving/sleep setting for the pci bus. Is it in bios or operating system. I would love to figure this out. I prefer windows 7 over xp.
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Hi,
I have been scanning through my Windows 7 PC looking for the same setting but haven't found it yet. I recall that prior to me
fitting good home switches it was necessary for me to complete a job in one session because I could not walk away overnight
otherwise Mach would shut down. I did cure that...eventually. After fitting home switches it didn't matter anyway so I forgot about it.
I'll keep looking.
Craig
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Watching;
olf20 / Bob
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Maybe you were thinking about PCI express link state power management. I have it turned off on all my pc's
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Back when there was a function formerly known as the search feature, i've spent hours searching and reading but never figured this out.
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Hi,
maybe I was but my PC had one built in port and another on a PCI card, I've never had a PCIe card fitted. Maybe its my confusion,
as I say it was a few years ago.
Craig
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Hi,
maybe try the Processor Power settings per the attached.
Craig
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In Win10 there is a setting for many devices that basically lets the computer turn off this device to save power. IIRC there is a similar setting in Win7 but I don't have a Win7 computer near me to look for it.
If you want to take a look, go into device manager, device properties, power saving, then uncheck the box for let the computer turn this device to save power.
HTH
Mike
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Processor power management setting didn't change anything. After about an hour of sitting, the spindle shut off and mach3 has lost communication.
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Maybe until somebody comes up with a fix for the shutdown problem -
If you got room on your BOB set up a phony axis that goes nowhere like a rotary C:
write a little program that runs in a loop for the phony axis to keep it and mach busy until you need it -
just a thought .
bill
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there is a Little tool called "Move Mouse" as Freeware avaliable,
maybe this will avoid to go into power save mode?
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I have a feeling that there is no fix for this. Probably one of the reasons they stopped developing mach3. Novakon has had this issue with mach3 and i'm sure Tormach has as well.
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Hi,
Probably one of the reasons they stopped developing mach3
No, I don't think so. It was explained to me that Mach3 had become a large sprawling conglomerate of code. Many features of Mach3 relied on
some rather cheap and nasty tricks, if you fixed this problem then several other things stopped working. In short the code had become
so unwieldy that maintaing and developing it had become problematic at best.
Mach4 is a complete re-write and uses a much more structured and engineered approach. It is so different that its not possible to reuse code or
provide a simple update path, I mean even the licencing mechanisms are different.
I used to be able to leave my machine on overnight and come back the next day to pick up from where I left off. That tends to make me think its a PC
thing not Mach.
Just had a thought....(it didn't hurt that much either!).....could it be tha watchdog timer in Mach? Have you disabled it?
Craig
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I have a feeling that there is no fix for this. Probably one of the reasons they stopped developing mach3. Novakon has had this issue with mach3 and i'm sure Tormach has as well.
Most new Mach3 users in the last 5 years are using Windows 7 or later, and I've not heard anyone posting this issue, so I don't believe that it's a Mach3 issue, but rather, some type of Windows issue.
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I don't doubt that it is a windows issue. But i have 3 seperate machines that do the same thing. All have different motherboards and hard drives. But they do have the same windows 7 pro version. And, i never have watchdogs checked.
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Now that i'm thinking about it, I always leave the spindle running at 500rpm. I would think this would suffice to keep mach3 and windows busy doing something. I mean mach3 is sending out a signal to run the spindle and receiving an index signal back. Maybe it is a lack of input into windows. (usb?)
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I'm running W7 and leave mine on all the time, sometimes
for days. NEVER has mach3 stopped working.
I have disabled very little on W7.
olf20 / Bob
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You got something that is loaded or getting loaded and running in the background -
If You leave your spindle running and it gets stopped after a hour -
Same Win install on three diff machines. same problem , start stripping and uninstalling -
bill
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olf20/Bob, What version of win7 are you running, pro or home? What version of mach are you running? Parallel ports right?
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Win7 Home, ESS, 062.
Hope this helps!
olf20 / Bob
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That does help[. I didn't have this problem with an ESS and i suspected it was only a parallel port issue. looks like i am correct. There really isn't anything else on these computers.
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Sorry after I looked this morning after the machine
has been on for almost a week, it is Win7 Pro.
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I believe the problem lies with the parallel port driver that was changed in version 3.043.053. I rolled two machines back to 3.043.052 and this problem seems to have gone away. I hope this helps others with the same problem.
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Well,
After enough time and testing, the older version will stop responding as well under windows 7.
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Sounds like YOU just need to turn off
"PCIe Link State Power Management"
Follow this link to know how to do it:-
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/292971-pcie-link-state-power-management-turn-off-windows.html
Reuel
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Link state power management has been turned off from the beginning.
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I also disabled the following services
1. superfetch
2. Windows update
and
disabled/deleted all items listed in Task scheduler