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General Mach Discussion / frustrated....cannot seem to get a motor stepping
« on: March 23, 2011, 09:47:27 PM »
Ive been trying to get my motors to move for close to a month. I built a hobby cnc pro chopper board, downloaded their Mach profile which automatically sets the pins correctly and tried to get it working on my main computer (win7 64bit) that I added a PCI parallel card in (mobo did not have one)....I then did some reading that windows 7 is not recommended so I decided to try something else. I happened to have a PCMIA Parallel card so I tried that with my motion computing tablet with xp. Did a stripped down XP install with driver and mach only...changed the port in Mach to match (FFF0 I think) and again no movement. SOoOOOo I took it a bit further and built a new micro atx pc specifically for this purpose using some parts I had laying around along with a new motherboard/case(again XP install/drivers/mach only). I verified the on-board parallel port in the bios as having 378 as the address and tried to get some movement last night...again no dice.
There are a couple of possibilities I can think of but Id like some input from the experts...
1. On both the tablet and this new machine when I run the driver test I don't get a flat line...there are fairly large repeating spikes. I chalked the tablet up to being a tablet which everyone says is a no no due to power management but my new mini desktop is just as bad...actually its almost worse because it blue screened a few times while running the original driver...switched to the special driver and it locked up. Went back to the original and the last few times have been problem free (by "problem free" I mean it doesnt lock up but the large spikes are still there). I still need to find and run through the optimization file. I just can't believe that this would cause a no movement condition...or could it?
2. The next most likely problem is with the hobbycnc board as its the only thing in common with all my tests. Currently I've tried 3 computers...one with a parallel PCI card, one with a PCMIA card and the new PC with an on-board port. Not sure how I can verify that without the forking over more money for a different controller.
I've watched the video's, read the forums and checked my connections and wiring....I'm frustrated and at a loss especially with the poor driver outputs I'm seeing during the driver test. What else can I do?
There are a couple of possibilities I can think of but Id like some input from the experts...
1. On both the tablet and this new machine when I run the driver test I don't get a flat line...there are fairly large repeating spikes. I chalked the tablet up to being a tablet which everyone says is a no no due to power management but my new mini desktop is just as bad...actually its almost worse because it blue screened a few times while running the original driver...switched to the special driver and it locked up. Went back to the original and the last few times have been problem free (by "problem free" I mean it doesnt lock up but the large spikes are still there). I still need to find and run through the optimization file. I just can't believe that this would cause a no movement condition...or could it?
2. The next most likely problem is with the hobbycnc board as its the only thing in common with all my tests. Currently I've tried 3 computers...one with a parallel PCI card, one with a PCMIA card and the new PC with an on-board port. Not sure how I can verify that without the forking over more money for a different controller.
I've watched the video's, read the forums and checked my connections and wiring....I'm frustrated and at a loss especially with the poor driver outputs I'm seeing during the driver test. What else can I do?