Messages

811

General Mach Discussion / Re: Getting Disillusioned with Mach3.

« on: January 20, 2012, 04:26:25 PM »

as can be seen from the picture of the test sample I used.

Having tried to make such dials with a carbide engraving tip, I can only drool at this example. Can one commission?

Cheers

812

General Mach Discussion / Re: Getting Disillusioned with Mach3.

« on: January 17, 2012, 05:07:49 AM »

My observation is this; Mach is extensible and open, yet when someone has a specialty application, instead of using that open architecture to tap into the data that is available and using it to create their own application, they lay their special needs on the shoulders of the developer.
While I have to say that I am also distressed by the general instability of Mach, I can see now where some of it comes from; namely catering to the 'lobbyist's' instead of bulletproofing the existing code for those who dare to try use it in a production environment,

Harsh words, and yet some truth maybe.
However, more debugging of the core and less 'feature extension' might prove commercially profitable.

Cheers

813

General Mach Discussion / Re: Getting Disillusioned with Mach3.

« on: January 16, 2012, 05:02:27 PM »

The trouble that we have is that Mach3 (originally Mach1) was designed to be a simple CNC app (for routers and mills) ...
The base code in Mach3 is not ideal for what we have today and working with it is like trying to add on to a house of cards. ANY card out of place it will all fall. You have no idea the pain that I go through to work on the code in Mach3 and how much I fight to NOT change it..

Actually, some of us do have an idea of the pain.
And yes, the complete rewrite of the kernal is the only solution. Some of us KNOW this. (Painfully.)

So, two things: this sort of communication is vital, and some faint idea of the schedule would be very nice. Are we talking a week (hoho), a month (hoho) a year, or what? NO promises, just a hint to help your customers with their planning.

Cheers

814

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sometimes Mach just 'goes away'?

« on: January 16, 2012, 03:04:08 PM »

Hi Ray

Unplug the power cable FROM the ESS, or the USB cable from the USS.  Both have connectors, so are easy to disconnect.

Ha! You haven't seen the compact compressed rat's nest the builder made of the electronics on my rig. I am not sure there is a power connector for the ESS: I think it gets power through one of the headers. I didn't build this!

I have to pull the whole electronics crate out of the cupboard and remove a complex cover first. Getting access to the ESS takes about 15-20 minutes. I didn't build this!

Cheers

815

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sometimes Mach just 'goes away'?

« on: January 16, 2012, 12:33:30 AM »

Hi Ray

You can always re-boot the USB or Ethernet SmoothStepper by unplugging the power cable....

Well, yes, but the installation does not have a power switch on the ESS! Very few rigs would I think. So I have to cycle the CNC power, with the possible loss of registration.

I've never seen it in a state where it couldn't be killed by selecting it in the task list (NOT the applications list) in Task Manager.

I selected and 'killed' it 4-6 times in the process list (not the Application list), to no avail. Rather wierd, actually.

Do I blame Mach, or Windows (or me)?

Cheers

816

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sometimes Mach just 'goes away'?

« on: January 15, 2012, 09:05:03 PM »

Anyway version 043.022 should be a good indicator of whether the issue is related to what I am thinking it may be

Yup, that's the version I am running. Go get 'im!

As far as I know Mach is just a load of code all bundled together, it started off small and things added over the years and now is massive.

Time for a fundamental redesign and rewrite of the entire beast. The core design needs to be redone. Painful, expensive, but ultimately the only thing which can save it.
Yes, I have done everything from CPU hardware design to device driver design and programming to most everything going upwards from there. Great fun, albeit sometimes verging on burn-out territory, but fortunately I was my own manager!

Cheers

817

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sometimes Mach just 'goes away'?

« on: January 15, 2012, 06:56:09 PM »

My comments are well documented on that subject

Um - well, yes, I had noticed. Time Artsoft listened. :-)

I would rather Mach be locked down as it is and Mach Rev4 concentrated on. According to Brian the way Mach Rev4 will be written means its all modules and fixing something wont break something else.

If it is *not* modular right now then yes, I totally agree. That's the same problem MS have with Windows of course.

I do remember when DEC completely rewote their mainframe VMS OS many years for V5. The problems with V4 were well-known, and basically insoluble due to unstructured internal complexity. V5 was re-written from scratch in a hard-line modular micro-kernel form. A long wait, but so worth while. VMS is now used behind the scenes in banks, stock exchanges, nuclear reactors, USA destroyers and aircraft carriers, and is unbreakable and unhackable. The computer science community is still 'reinventing' the basic features which were in VMS, but 95% of them only know Windows. </rant> :-)

If you want go back to an old version of Mach and see if it still happens, cant remember exactly where I think the issue may have crept in but f its what I am thinking then I will be able to pin point it when I get to the mill tomorrow.

Thanks.

Cheers
Roger

818

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sometimes Mach just 'goes away'?

« on: January 15, 2012, 06:24:50 PM »

If it happens to me I think I will be able to tell Brian where to look, so fingers crossed

I noticed that on the Yahoo Group Artsoft *seem* to be putting huge amounts of effort into some very peripheral and debatable features or extensions for a couple of users rather than focusing on fixing the core problems in Mach for the vast bulk of customers. And some long-term Mach users seem to be getting a bit fed up with this. A bit like MS pushing more unwanted features into the next release rather than fixing the bugs in the current release. That concerns me. Any comment?

Cheers

819

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sometimes Mach just 'goes away'?

« on: January 15, 2012, 06:15:54 PM »

Not a pro here but a thought as it sounds like a video conflict. Do you have onboard video? Have you tried turning off the toolpath display to see if that's it?

Hum .... thing is, the rest of the video system runs absolutely OK. I can photo-edit or run WMV with no problems after Mach disappears. But I will check if I can.

Mind you, that path display is essential during debugging!

Cheers

820

General Mach Discussion / Re: Sometimes Mach just 'goes away'?

« on: January 15, 2012, 05:05:37 PM »

Hi Gerry

Did you try the development version?

No, I haven't. I am trying to get some work done and the implications of the notes were that the dev version might crash. I may have misread this of course - I don't know. I would appreciate your advice here.

Another thing is to look in the bios for a setting, either C1E or EIST, and disable it.

Frankly, I have extreme doubts that clock speed has anything whatsoever to do with the problem. Let me explain.

This disappearing act only happens (as far as I know) shortly after Mach has been started. Typically I will have just loaded a g-code file and be moving the mouse around the display window to check the path. Poof, and the whole Mach window is gone.

Reasons I think it is some very strange Mach problem and not a clock problem include:
It only happens to Mach, and usually just after starting.
It only happens (I think) when I am mousing around the path display.
It leaves part of the Mach process in memory and UNKILLABLE.
It interacts with the ESS driver, crashing the ESS.
It does not kill the ethernet interface in the ESS because when that happens Windows reports a loss of network.

We know Mach is trying to subvert Windows a bit to get reliable Real-Time performance: I have this gut feeling that the problem is down there somewhere. No evidence, just 40 years experience at the hardware level.

Cheers