Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: neonfrog on May 18, 2006, 09:01:22 AM
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Howdy.
I am setting up a PC for a Mach machine. It is for one of my engineering friends (he's the CNC guy, I'm the PC guy).
Does Mach require that the parallel ports have their own interrupt / IRQ? I read the manual and understand about the I/O addressing, but there is no mention of IRQs. Maybe I'm just thinking to deep into the old days of important functions like this re
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(fat finger disease...)
...like this requiring IRQs.
I'm using SIIG add-in cards:
http://siig.com/product.asp?catid=97&pid=150 (mine are a slightly older version)
Windows XP has both add-in cards (LPT2 and LPT3), as well as the onboard LPT1, set to "Never use an interrupt" in Port Settings. Is this the correct setting? Any other settings in here I should know about, or are the defaults generally just fine? Any motherboard things I should do, like setting specific PCI slots to specific IRQs (always a fun game with XP and modern HALs)?
Two more questions:
1. Can Mach use 3 parallel ports? The two SIIG PCI cards in addition to the onboard parallel port? My engineer friend is the type to want more more more :-) Not a "must have," just curious. The manual never expressly states a max.
2. If it is only 2 parallel ports max, can I set Mach II to use JUST the 2 add-in cards and not the onboard LPT1 at all? Does the Mach III manual page 5-2 say all there is to say on this subject? I want to do this in case of accidents so the motherboard is less likely to get nuked. I am aware of outboard opto-isolator circuits and we're definitely considering them, but just in case. Also for consistency I'd like the whole thing to go through the same chips.
I really hope I'm not asking bone-headed questions. I'm a not-so-hot PC guy with almost zero CNC experience, I've never used your software, and have only read the manual (and a few dozen forum posts) while trying to prepare this PC for my friend. He's generally brilliant .... just not with PCs! What a pair we make trying to convert an old Ah-ha milling setup to something more modern. He's already purchased your product.
Thanks in advance,
Patrick
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I have a dual port SIIG card that I use for my machine, I don't have IRQ's assigned to any of the lpt ports, But windows does assign a 'odd' io address that can't be changed, in my case 0xffa8 but I plug that into mach3 and it works fine.. Mach3 doesn't handle 3 lpt ports that I am aware of.
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"If it is only 2 parallel ports max, can I set Mach II to use JUST the 2 add-in cards and not the onboard LPT1 at all? Does the Mach III manual page 5-2 say all there is to say on this subject?"
Yes, just set the port one io to one of the SIIG cards and port 2 to the other io. In my case (Single card dual port) 0xffa0 & 0xffb8
and I use 0x387 for a printer. If can find the IO range assigned to the port under control panel, system, lptX, resource tab.
Bryan
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Thanks! I had a feeling I was over-thinking it.