My machine is down, has been for 10 days, deadlines are about to be missed, and I’m out of answers….
First, some background…
This all started over a year ago, when after an automatic update from Microsoft (I’m not saying this was the cause, that’s just when it happened, the next day after an automatic update), the ability for my PC to call up hyperlinks from one app to another broke… Links in outlook express mail would not call up pages in firefox or explorer, so I had to save them to the desktop and then manually load them into the browsers.. The big issue I had, was that the ‘gadgets’ in V Carve pro no longer worked, as they used hyperlinks to call them up.. I needed the keyhole gadget for plaques.. All I would get is a blank page.. After posting the problem on several forums (ie Vectric and CNC Zone), I was never able to solve the problem..
At the time, I had my neighbor (An IT tech of more than 2 decades experience), help me to tke the machine back to before the MS update.. didn’t help.. He came over and did a complete restore, didn’t help.. We went through all the suspect causes, telling XP what to do with hyperlinks and what not.. nothing worked…
This is to be my first summer of hitting local craft shows and fairs, selling my wares… The first was to be this next Saturday.. I’m not going to be ready.. the following Saturday is another, and unless I can get this machine working again 'soon' I will not have some product I agreed to make for a customer (a local historical group) ready either…
Ten days ago, I decided I could not wait any longer for the gadgets feature to work, and after my machine had some sort of hiccup and destroyed a piece of maple and did a pretty good job on the jig holding it, I told my neighbor that I wanted to wipe the Hard Drive clean and install XP Pro clean from scratch… So I backed everything up (including a complete disc image of the existing HD), and we wiped the HD clean and reinstalled XP from his custom discs…. Then went to Dell, and downloaded and installed all of their recommended drivers for this machine.. Reinstalled Mach3, etc… My machine has not worked since…
Okay, that’s the back ground.. Now the problem and the history of what I have tried to do since….
When I hold down a jog key and keep it held down, after ten or fifteen seconds, I start to hear the motor step.. at first a couple steps a second, then gradually ramping up in speed to where the machine moves maybe a quarter to a half an inch a minute… All the motor settings are as they should be…. The ‘sounds’ that Mach3 makes (ie when the e stop is activated), are very distorted..
Computer Specs..
DELL OPTIPLEX 745 SDT INTEL CORE 2 DUO 2.13GHz 80GB 2GB DVDRW XP PROWhen I do a driver test, the driver initializes and the sound made is clear and undistorted, as soon as Mach3 takes control, the sound is distorted… It initially list the pulses per second as about 95 (which is in line with the jog speed performance of the machine), the graph only goes about an eighth of the way across the screen, and it says ‘pulsing too fast’.. then a few seconds later it says pulse rating ‘system excellent’… but the ‘pulses per second’ still reads about 95-97..
If, I then select a kernel speed of 35k, the ‘pulses per second’ then jump up to about 35,000 and the graph looks normal..
If I switch back to a kernel speed of 25k, then the ‘pulses per second’ reads about 25,000 and the graph looks normal…
At this point, I decided there was a problem with my computer, that the clock was too unstable to pass the mach3 test, and this was why the sound was distorted too, that Mach3 was just taxing the system too much..
So, I bought another reconditioned Dell PC..
Dell Optiplex 960 Tower Core 2 Duo 3.16GHz 160GB 4GB DVD KB and MS Vista BusinessIt came with Vista Business, and preferring XP Pro, we installed XP Pro SP2, and then I downloaded all of Dells drivers for that machine, reinstalled Mach3, rebooted, and ran the driver test (I had not even yet hooked up the Parallel Cable to the machine)…
EXACT SAME PROBLEM WITH THE DRIVER TEST!! SAME SOUND DISTORTION (albeit not as bad, probably due to the much more powerful processor)!!
And the machine performs exactly the same way…
The strange thing is, that with the original computer, for a moment once a few days ago, the machine jogged normally… but after a reboot, to see if it was fixed, it was back to the same problem…
This seems to be almost certainly a driver problem in XP Pro.. but I’m at a loss where else to look.. In the hardware devices, all drivers are installed… Both PCs work perfect in every other way.. Even the issue with hyperlinks in V Carve Pro is fixed… I have uninstalled and reinstalled the Mach3 driver so many times it’s ridiculous… Nothing helps.. The IT tech is at a loss… I’m at a loss…
I just can’t get the Mach3 driver to work, and thus the machine to work…
So, I’m hoping and praying that someone here has some ideas….
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