Messages

1

General Mach Discussion / Re: Add-on PCI card or another type of connection?

« on: November 27, 2014, 04:48:27 AM »

Thanks for your help. After 3 days digging deep in that PC, I decided to buy another one with integrated LPT port - I found Dell optiplex g620 in perfect condition for 45 euro. This is real plug-and-play device for mach3.

I found an interesting article for desktop computers and mach3 - http://www.tormach.com/engineering_tmc.html

Advanced users know, but I did not know - most computers meet big difficulties handling mach3 signals to the parallel port.
So if you are looking for suitable PC, then you need some desktop PC, produced in the period 2000-2007. If it is newer, then you will have headache.
Mach3 is an old software, parallel port is ancient technology and win XP is in the hystory as well, so in order to build reliable configuration, you definitely need PC produced in those times.  

2

General Mach Discussion / Add-on PCI card or another type of connection?

« on: November 24, 2014, 05:36:30 PM »

Hello, I`m trying to control new 3 axes router with Mach3 and Win XP

My motherboard is ASUS P5Q PRO. It does not have built-in parallel port. So I installed add-on card to one of the PCI ports.
The card is Moschip Semiconductor mcs9865. It has 2 serial and 1 parallel ports. From device manager I saw the PCI Parallel port adress: first value in i/o range is EC00. Of course, I changed the default adress  0x378 with this one EC00 in mach3.

With drivertest.exe I saw continious unstable signal from 35 000 up to 44 000.

In fact, the PC does not send any signals to the parallel port.
In the diagnostics tab on mach3, I don`t see any leds blinking whatever I do. I see only few parameters - Time in int. (changing really fast from 2.6 to 3.7) and Input signal current state = 24 112

I don`t know what to do. I guess this add-on card sucks.

Do you have any suggestion for reliable COMPUTER-TO-LPT (Parallel port) connection?

Thanks
Dimitar