Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: BluePinnacle on January 29, 2008, 07:31:51 AM
-
Hello all
I'm at the end of my rope here.
In principle my machine should work, but I've had no luck in getting mach3 to talk to the PCI parallel port card I've got. It's one of these:
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31AXPB4D67L._AA280_.jpg)
Spec:
Mill: Pinnacle CNC vertical mill, 3-axis stepper, 4hp motor, controlled coolant, spindle, pneumatic brake, pneumatic drawbar. weighs about 2 tons ;D
PC: no-name beige box, 900MHz Celeron, 512MB, no vices as such
Stepper controller: Routout 10-amp controller, works fine
port 1: LPT1 (onboard) works fine and sends the steppers up and down marvellously
port 2: Value twin PCI Parallel port adaptor, RS part number 449-2510, probably a cat in a bag as I've seen the same ones for £8 on Ebay and RS had £40 off me for it
Control/isolation: 9v control circuit, relayed/opto'd for safety, in-house design my m'self. works fine.
The PCI card installs smoothly enough and doesn't throw up any nasties on the way.
When I bring up mach3 it looks for the second port at 0x278, where it's supposed to be. This doesn't work, so I investigated further and went to Device manager to find the resources tab. LPT1 (onboard) has a resources tab, but LPT2 and LPT3 (PCI) do not. Looking through accessories>system tools>system information I can see a list of resources per device. I have the addresses for "multi I/O adapter" and the PCI slots themselves, but having plugged all of the address range start points into Mach3, I cannot get it to see the port at all, ever. I'm using auto-detect to look for a pin being switched on port 2. I've tried with and without my opto board, up to and including a bare cable shorting pins to ground.
looking at the PCI board, all the ground pins are indeed grounded so no issues there.
Is there a way round this? has anyone successfully wrangles one of these miserable cards into line?
Alternatively is there a known board that is better for the job? I've seen the Rogers ones mentioned, they seem very robust, and at the sort of price they are I'd be happy to go for one. I really need the extra inputs/outputs that a second port will give me. British distributors, anywhere?
Thanks in advance - any help appreciated.
-
Ok, Someone with a retail version of windows needs to contact Microsoft for support. Not the OEM version. I think it has something to do with the way Windows detects the M.B. MY 1G dual pIII just bit the bit. I want my 2nd port working again
I have got two address numbers: one for multifunction I/O EC00. and one for parrallel port I/O E800. That cant be good????
I bet it can be fixed in the registry????? Just a guess, but Microsoft needs to fix us up. 866 234 2060.
-
It is only 59 bucks, and they just told me no charge if they cant fix it
-
Update! Success! sort of.
I tried a spare parallel port card that was lying around from someone else's computer, and it worked fine. The port addresses came up first time and everything. This one was based on a NetMos 9835 CV chipset and had two serial ports on a riser attached to it . Now, NetMos later turned into MosChip, so the drivers are available at http://www.moschip.com/data/products/NM/WinXP_2K_NT.zip . They installed fine and worked brilliantly with my isolating relay board.
unfortunately the board's owner wants it back despite offers of my left leg, wife etc. for it. An apparently identical one is available from Digital-systems.co.uk for £7.18 (stock code 26006) plus delivery so I'll have two here on Friday to play with. hopefully these will do as well. Either way, I'll be back in to tell you all about it. probably quite loudly...
As to the previous parallel card I had off RS, i think they want a little talking to for selling junk like this for that sort of price.
-
What operating system are you working with? I'm having a heck of time trying to get a new computer with no parallel port to work with an add on board. I have two boards, one by SIIG and the other by PCI which sounds just like the one you ordered. My board has NM9735 CV chipset. But would not work. I'm running Vista operating system. The tech support at SIIG said that their board would not work, no way of addressing the legacy address.
SIIG CyberParallel Dual
PCI- 2S1P
-
i'm usiing xp pro, i won't touch vista with a bargepole especially anything relying on low-level or time critical operations. now, i haven't used a 9735 chipset but i imagine it should perform pretty much the same as the one i was using, in xp at least. if vista doesn't handle physical addressing in the same way as xp then you may be a bit stuck - there is a whole forum on vista compatibility. i won't be reading it until somebody not from redmond says anything nice about vista which doesn't involve desktop effects.
for my next trick i'm going to have to build a charge-pump safety board, since the lpt makes the relays snap on and off when the computer wakes up and coughs, and i don't want the spindle jumping about and the coolant jizzing all over, etc.
-
I am using the same 9835 netmos pci card, and it wont work for me, the drivers are the same for all metmos cards 9835, 9735 ect? this card worked with my 3k system that started missing. with 2k the address came up as 278m what address did you use? the multifunction card address or the plt2,3 address?
-
http://www.moschip.com/html/download_drivers.html
A lot of the I/O cards use the same driver package - As to exactly which drivers are installed i'm not sure. i just unpacked the .ZIP file to a flash drive and aimed the windows installer at it; off it toddled and installed the card. The port address was taken from Device Manager - just look up LPT2, properties, resources, and there's a box showing several hexidecimal input/output ranges , ie
18F - 194
244-24D
455 - 48A
Copy the first, lowest address from this list (18F for this one, yours will be different) and pop it in Mach3's port address for LPT2, then click Apply. I note with some displeasure that changing the address does not by itself enable the apply button - to do this, uncheck and recheck the "enable port 2" tickbox, then click Apply as usual.
As to this business with some parallell cards not displaying a Resources tab ... I'm not sure but they may use some sort of emulation to allow printing but very little else. I think all told they're not worth the bother and should be avoided, I was looking for a proper address for mine in the depths of the registry and all sorts of other unholy places, it wasn't there.
Is there/should we start a thread solely devoted to cards or chipsets that we know behave themselves well with mach3?
-
I worked on mine again today, I am still baffled.
Q? Did you hook up your lp2 card to a device first? Is your enable plug and play device checked on? Did you manually set your card to lpt2? mine comes up as lpt3, but i change it. My lowest hexidecimal address is in the programs, acc, sys tool, sys info, hardware, i/O area: And it is E080-E08f. but in device manager it says ec00. Is my card not compatible????? Have you tried the other cards you purchased? ty for the help.
I am checking my pins for voltage change with enable1,2,3.
I get no change at all. 17 is at low voltage and 2-9, 14,16 are 5.10. It must be an addressing issue. i think I am going to hook it up to a scanner, or printer next.
-
You dont need to change it from Lpt3, all Mach needs is an address and it doesnt matter whether Windows says its Lpt1, 2, 3 ....50 OR whatever. All you are doing is asigning the address of your card as port2 in Mach, not Lpt2. Hope you follow what I mean.
Have you tried entering E080 or EC00? Maybe the reason you are seeing two different addresses is because you are changing it from Lpt3 to Lpt2.
Hood
-
Q? Did you hook up your lp2 card to a device first?
A - No, just fitted it and installed the drivers.
Q. Is your enable plug and play device checked on?
A - Yes.
Q. Did you manually set your card to lpt2? mine comes up as lpt3, but i change it.
A - mine came up as LPT2 anyway, but this can be changed - I don't think this matters as mach3 cannot be ordered to look for an LPT number, just a hex address..
Q. My lowest hexidecimal address is in the programs, acc, sys tool, sys info, hardware, i/O area: And it is E080-E08f. but in device manager it says ec00. Is my card not compatible?????
A - Try both. The address Device manager gave me worked first time. I tested the card out by setting mach3 to autodetect a signal for X++ (ports& pins - inputs - automatically detect inputs) which is lazy but effective as it will pick up anything it sees changing. Or, to eliminate hardware gripes, pop a 300 ohm resistor between pin 10 and pin 25 with autodetect on - this should give you a result.
Q. Have you tried the other cards you purchased? ty for the help.
A - np :) yes, tried them, they are identical to the one i tried last week and they work perfectly.
Good luck with this one - Whether or not the card is good, let us know and tell us what chipset it uses so we can get it on record. photos if possible ;)
-
BLUEPINN
here is a tip you might wan't to try.first check if you have IOMEGAWARE installed if you do, get rid of it.if it is not there that is better.now some drivers like com 1,2 lpt1 take a dominent position
when they load so you have to change the loading order.first look in your system info for IRQ sharing and see what shares IRQ with your new card.make a list.then goto driver manager and uninstal
the drivers that share the same IRQ.and then uninstal com1,2 and lpt1.now shut down and reboot in safe mode.reinstal your drivers manually ,add the netmos first and the com1,2 last then reboot.
when loading the drivers manualy all your software is already in the computer so you have to look for it.when it ask you for a disk you pick from a list.give it a try you might have one of those tough
motherboards that you have to push around a little.
bill
-
No Iomegaware here, I fitted the box up from a bare disk. The new port card works fine anyway, and since i saw sense enough to put all the limits on one pin and the homes on another it's got an awful lot of spare capacity. I've got to re-do the interface board since the one i have is completely the wrong shape now, this way I can leave a block of spare outputs for a couple of extra steppers for future improvements, rotary table etc.
My new card uses IRQ sharing and this doesn't seen to raise any gremlins - it's an Abit motherboard btw, if that helps.
-
I was having the same problem with my pci port adaptor - set it to lpt2 and Mach couldn't see it.
I checked the resources and it was using E000h for the address. I plugged that into Mach and it came up fine.
(0xe000 for the address)
-
Normally this is what happens. The old (triangular) card did not prompt WXP to display a Resources tab, and no resources info could be found by other means.
The MosChip item worked ideally, just as it should.
-
I had a problem with vista and older parts to.Go to the manufacturers site and get a much newer driver and force it.i've found that they have mostly shrunk their chips and not changed the design.try it even if it says its not supported.It worked for my ati vido card I went up a whole series. goodluck Al
-
This has been resolved, I just used a different PCI card. Vista? not using Vista, and won't be for some time. Thanks anyway. :)
-
Here's another vote for the NetMos/Moschip PCI parallel cards. I've been using them for years in DOS (TurboCNC) and now XP (Mach3/Tormach) and they are reliable (and cheap! I just bought my latest two from http://cgi.ebay.com/?ViewItem&item=370035954186 ) And with the half-height card size, with a little cut-n-bend on the bracket, the card fit in my Dell SFF desktop case too.
Randy
-
i'm usiing xp pro, i won't touch vista with a bargepole especially anything relying on low-level or time critical operations. now, i haven't used a 9735 chipset but i imagine it should perform pretty much the same as the one i was using, in xp at least. if vista doesn't handle physical addressing in the same way as xp then you may be a bit stuck - there is a whole forum on vista compatibility. i won't be reading it until somebody not from redmond says anything nice about vista which doesn't involve desktop effects.
for my next trick i'm going to have to build a charge-pump safety board, since the lpt makes the relays snap on and off when the computer wakes up and coughs, and i don't want the spindle jumping about and the coolant jizzing all over, etc.
i'm usiing xp pro, i won't touch vista with a bargepole especially anything relying on low-level or time critical operations. now, i haven't used a 9735 chipset but i imagine it should perform pretty much the same as the one i was using, in xp at least. if vista doesn't handle physical addressing in the same way as xp then you may be a bit stuck - there is a whole forum on vista compatibility. i won't be reading it until somebody not from redmond says anything nice about vista which doesn't involve desktop effects.
for my next trick i'm going to have to build a charge-pump safety board, since the lpt makes the relays snap on and off when the computer wakes up and coughs, and i don't want the spindle jumping about and the coolant jizzing all over, etc.
disableing self check in bios might do it
-
We got one of these cards and didn't get the resource tab in the device manager but I did see a Multi IO device being installed so had a look at that and then entered the IO value 0x9008 (might be different) into Mach3 and bingo the motors and spindle now work shame it's not got a working e-stop but JS don't need one of them so the machine still hasn't got one wired up right.
Setup is a brand new Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Edition P2411 Sempron 3800 (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143780) from ebuyer and a Startech Economy PCI Parallel Card (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124003) with windows XP Pro. Will find out later what it's like on the machine and post the results.
-
Who doesn't need an emergency stop? I don't like the sound of that one bit.
This has been solved anyway, thanks for the help, i think we've established that MosChip boards are the way to go and not the cheapy triangular ones. :)
-
Full testing showed that the outputs worked but not the inputs. The first machine does have an E-Stop but it's wired make to stop not the break to stop, so no input still allowed the machine to run.
Going to get one of the MosChip ones.
-
Hey guys,
I need some help getting my PC to talk with my Zenbot
I have a Moschip PCI card that appears to be communicating with my Zenbot but I can't get Mach 3 to control it.
Zenbot sent me a config file but it won't "take" - I have copied it to the MAch 3 folder but the settings don't change. Zenbot says this happens sometimes and doesn't have a fix. They tired talking me through a manual configuration ubt nothing works.
I can get the head of the CNC machine to move slightly when I change the settings on my PCI card but I wonder of I have the pin settins in Mach 3 wrong.
Can someone tell me what settings they are using?
Phil