Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: RICH on April 27, 2008, 09:03:06 PM
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I am trying to get my Dell Optiplex 520 / Pentium 3ghz / 2 Gig of memory / xp PRO / to run my steppers properly.
I know for a fact that it is a parallel port signal quality issue. The Nec laptop that I use works great but wanted to
upgrade the PC end of things. Looking at the parallel port signals with an oscilloscope confirmed a nice 5V clean crisp step pulse waveform out of the NEC. The Dell was a different story, both the port on motherboard and installed Rosewill RC-303 card ( and may I say thank you to the guy that posted the special drivers for the Rosewill) are not clean / do provide 5v / but there is a lot going on which explains why the steppers sound ragged. I don't want to have a basket full of cards before finding a good one.
Has anybody out there purchased a card which provides a nice clean 5v signal using a similar or same model computer?
( Dell recomended a Starteck PCI-2S1P) Anybody have experience with that card?
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The following may benefit someone else on what was checked for on the DELL. I knew it was a PC signal issue but wanted to check
all the other stuff which could cause problems.
1. Sniffed the cables for possible RF influences.
2. Tried varing different power supply outlets.
3. Tried two different I/O cards ( both returned to the store, XP complient now means something to me!)
4. Optimzed the PC with exception of the Standard PC.
5. Post cloning my original hard drive to another for testing purposes, every program, one by one ( good grief there were a lot ),
was removed and MACH3 run to see if there was a possible program issue which would come to light. There were none! Made no
difference. [ security software was always turned off and were the first programs to be removed]
6. Tried every concievable motor tuning / MACH3 settings that I could play with.
7. Additional PC changes from combinations of BIOS settings, windows settings, hardware combinations disconnected,etc. All with
MACH testing done in between each. The only thing that made a slight improvement was putting it into Standard PC mode, but
nothing to write home about!
8. Reformat drive, new XP installation, MACH2.63 loaded only, optimized, ( truly stand alone PC for CNC) No difference!
9. Mach 2.6 & Mach 3.x tried . No difference!
10. And then there were things in windows that were tried that I don't wish the unknowledgable to even try. No difference.
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Are using the onboard video card?
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Humm, what does this have to do with the video card? What ver of XP are you running, seems 64 bit has a inherent problem?
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Have not used it but, Ron Rogers sells this one made to work with Mach.
http://rogersmachine.net/PCIport.html
Maybe time for a SmoothStepper Board?
Regards,
Sid
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Humm, what does this have to do with the video card? What ver of XP are you running, seems 64 bit has a inherent problem?
I think it's deeper than just the parallel port, the onboard video might have something to do with Mach's pulse generator. If that doesn't work, you'll never get a clean signal to the pport.
Monte
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Use a PCI videos card and most likely your problems will stop. It makes big difference if you run on board video, at least the three computers I set up run near perfect with a PCI or AGP video card.
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Rich, If you have an empty PCI or PCI express slot you could add a video card and disable the on board graphics. Not so sure that is your problem my self though. I have had 2 PCs fo my old mill and one for the Hurco I'm working on now and all have onboard graphics. I haven't seen a problem from it yet. Have you tried to disable the tool path display in Mach to see if it helps? Do you have anything in your debounce setting on general config. page?
Brett
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Meant to say, post your XML file too. Maybe we can find something there.
Brett
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Have a look at the video, printer port hardware IRQ's & DMA settings, I am not at my CNC PC right now and can't check but if there is some interaction you could probably manually re-assigne the inturupt or uninstall and re-install either the port or video and it may "fix" itself.
Kristin
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Try takeing your debounce to 2000. Shuttle accel and backlash settings will not have anything to do with this I don't think. You can turn off your toolpath display on the diag. screen just above the reset button. Also, for your step and direction pulse length in motor tuning for each axis set them to 5 and in ports and pins, port set up set to sherline mode and see if those help any. Sounds like your picking up noise to me. Do you have a flexable keyboard? Any ps2 to usb (or vise versa) adapters on your mouse or keyboard?
Brett
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I have had problems with the pulse engine and onboard graphics, I have also had no problems whatsoever with onboard graphics.
I could almost say for sure the Smoothstepper would solve your problems but as you know nothing is a certainty especially when we are talking computers. As an example however, I have a pico mobo, it has onboard graphics, embedded CPU, onboard LAN, Serial, PS2 for mouse and keyboard and 4 USB ports and all together its smaller than two credit cards sitting side by side :)
As an experiment I installed Mach on it and ran the drivetest, it crashed about 2 seconds in, then hooked up the SmoothStepper (Beta one) and it ran my mill every bit as good as the full size computer did, in fact it was actually better.
There are still a few things to do to the PlugIn for the SmoothStepper, sync for lathe threading being one of them but I have no doubt that this will be completed soon.
Hood
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:)
Rich, silly question to ask now but are your drives tuneable and if so, have you tuned them?
Brett
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Sorry Rich, I meant do your stepper drivers have a tuneing pot like the Gecko 201s.
Brett
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Hey Rich,
Perhaps this might be something you already thought of but.... Maybe it's time to give the Optiplex the Old 'Gravity Test'?
I think if you took a poll on what peeps thought of Dell you would get a mized bag of results. In the past Dell has chosen to do some funky (proprietary) things with some of their machines which have raised compatibility issues fo some folks.
Seems to me like every Office Depot nowadays is having a sale on a Core Dual Desktops - for the agravation that you are going through would it not be easier to just swap your computer?
Just my $.02
Sid
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sid,
I was waiting for somebody to suggest dumping the small form factor(I believe that the optiplex is small form?), because I struggled for a year with a compaq "evo" (means "evil" :D), before trying a full sized desktop(dell dimension8200) and boy-what a huge difference it made.
This change instantly gave me rapids of 80 ipm's with no lost steps,compared to only 11 ipm's before.. only difference, full sized desktop.(Just like Art suggests from the very beginning, but I was too cheap to spend any money on a good stable desktop computer!
I know very little about video cards and the like, but your optiplex could be un-fixable. I hope you have success with your efforts, though,
Good Luck!
Glenn
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If you have the SmoothStepper on the way I think even your Dell should be good enough LOL
Hood