Messages

31

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: crash on starting edit mode

« on: January 19, 2018, 10:41:49 AM »

@rhtuttle
Looks like my xp is missing some dll's
My screen works fine with newer windows versions.

Reinhard

32

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?

« on: January 19, 2018, 10:39:56 AM »

Hi Jim,

thank you for your support and the hint to dependency walker.
There are 2 dlls missing: ieshims.dll and wer.dll - wich looks like a well known problem without solution.

I'll try to find that dlls somewhere, but if I don't find them, I'm done with m4

Reinhard

33

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?

« on: January 19, 2018, 09:51:39 AM »

Hi Jim,

we have a change log in the Mach4 download tab

Yeah - pretty outdated and it looks like a developer has to sit down and write a novel
Such things could be automated from ticket system so its a one-click operation at build time.
... and it would be nice, if you package that file into the installer, so any user can read it after installation.

Tuesday morning alone of this week I assisted 3 users in getting their machines up and running with Mach4 and a compatible motion controller right out of the box. No custom scripting required.

Sure you do!
But who knows about it?
In germany we have a saying: do good things and talk about it
I don't doubt, that your doing good - but I miss your talking about it
A whole year without any change (yes, I realized the blog entry about lua) on your website is a very long time.

We created the help desk to better track and ensure that tickets are responded to and users are helped. Some folks do not want to post publicly what they have for questions, and to be honest I don't think that you would want to read 10 posts a day about how to license the software or what OS the software can run on.

You're right.
But beside that - look at the forum thread like "mach 4 feature request" and "mach 4 bug reports" ...
They are dead, unsearchable and nobody cares about it =:O
I believe, that a ticket system as used by open source hosters will reduce your work (respect to feedback) and rise your reputation for hobby-users.
Well my 2 cent

Reinhard

34

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: crash on starting edit mode

« on: January 19, 2018, 07:56:18 AM »

Hi,

out of curiosity I reinstalled 3390 and it worked fine. Enter edit-mode and terminating m4 - without problems.
Then I tried 3485 - no problems here too.
Ok, back with 3633 - enter edit mode -> crash.

Reinhard

35

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: crash on starting edit mode

« on: January 19, 2018, 06:48:42 AM »

Hi Craig,

but you want Windows software to run?

If there would exists a linux solution, I won't even look at windows apps.
But the only linux solution that hits the same direction than m4 is linuxcnc, wich I consider slow and ugly. It has nothing attractive, not in theory and not in practice. So its not an option for me.

I appreciate m4 and I like the huge bunch of possibilities, to extend m4 to special needs.
So as long as m4 would run on my dead box, it is an option. When I have to buy another windows license, m4 is out.

So, when I heard about the possibility of m4 for linux - I was excited! And I would do (nearly) anything, to help m4 for linux become success. But for that, an testing-environment has to be created. I'm willing to participate!

Reinhard

36

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?

« on: January 19, 2018, 06:38:14 AM »

Hi,

So Mach 4 was the direct result of us listening to what our users wanted!  But now they don't want it?  Thus my confused state of mind.

Ii used to be, or I used to think, that hobbyist had simple machines to do simple things.  3 axis mill without a tool changer, for example.  But no.  Just take a look at the feature request thread!!!!  90% of that thread is people wanting Mach 4 to do something special.  But also, 90% of that can be accomplished with using the tools that are already provided with Mach 4!

I completely agree with Steve: mach4 is feature-rich and powerful enuf to drive any hobby machine.
... and I agree on him too, that the one who makes money with his cnc is no more a hobby user.

For me, m4 is well suited to drive any special machine beyond hobby interests too.
... and I don't have any problem in having to learn m4 programming and a new programming language to solve special needs.
Even more - I don't care, if api or fileformat changes - as long as there exist an upgrade path, with reasonable costs and instructions on how to reach current api level.

What I miss most is communication from artsoft to hobby-users. Let me tell, what I thought during last year:
This time last year I was convinced, that m4 will be my way. But then I became unsure, as I didn't see any reaction on bug reports. I followed the updates, but could not see any issue solved.
Then from august until january this year there was no update - and I thought: well, they might be working on other products or for industrial customers ...
When the last update came out, it was clear: there has been folks working on m4. Nearly 200 commits is a bunch of changes.
But where can I read what has been done?
The installation does not contain any information about that.

So from my point of view, best way to bring hobby-users back to artsoft and document the commitment of artsoft to hobby-users would be in establishing a ticket system public-readable like this forum. This way, hobbyists can enter wishes and bug-report and developers can answer by setting issue-priority (like "we're working on it" or "closed. Not our business").
Hobbists that can search the tickets and see, what happened to reported bugs (resolved with build ####, need more information).
I think, that will create transparency and feedback with little cost to developers and it could be a way, to receive user-submissions like translated files or the like.
The ticket system will allow to create some statistics and history without the need to have a developer write a novel.
I think, a ticket system will create communication from artsoft to hobby-users at little to no extra costs for the developers.

Reinhard

37

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: crash on starting edit mode

« on: January 18, 2018, 07:02:41 AM »

Hi,

as you already might have guessed - a very dead copy of XP with latest patch (published after funeral) applied.
And before you ask: no, I will not buy another windows variant. All my machines are running linux, so I don't want and don't need windows.

Reinhard

38

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?

« on: January 18, 2018, 06:31:16 AM »

Hi Craig,

Sorry, I should have mentioned the build numbers

I worked on my screenset with 3390 and the most recent build, I have is 3633.
Do you have lua extensions in your screen and did you use functions from a selfwritten module file?

What do you mean with NFS? For me NFS stands for network file system and I don't know, how that could be related to m4

Can you find an earlier build of Mach4?

I have several versions, but not a complete archive. Why do you ask for earlier versions?

... effect of that policy will be that hobby users will desert Mach.

Yes, that's very poor. I know about several people, that don't want to try m4 - some of them stay with m3, but lot of them are looking for other solutions. Lot of potential hobby users don't understand and don't estimate the fanuc compatibility. And from what I can see - there's no affordable motion controller for power-users (like pci/pcie-mesa cards for linuxcnc) that works with m4.

Reinhard

39

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?

« on: January 18, 2018, 04:21:57 AM »

Hi Craig,

as far as I can tell you can't read a screen .set file

the screen-file is just a zip archive with the screen.xml at root level and a directory containing the images. It can be read by all tools, that can handle zip archives and there's no problem, change anything inside the screen file. On linux systems, the file will be recognized as zip-archive without the need of renaming it.

I would guess therefore that your screenset is corrupt rather than incompatible.

No, I'm really sure, that the screen file is not corrupt!
So there has to be some incompatibility. But I don't have the tools to figure it out.

what is it about this situation that causes you to blame the difference between Hobby and Industrial?

I reported several bugs here in forum, as well as at support-mail - the time I dedicated at m4 none of my issues has been adressed by an update and I never got feedback from support-mail. I wanted to check the most recent version to see, whether any issue has been resolved, but if my whole work is rubbish now, I'm not very attracted to test any more with m4.
Additionally I translated the german files and sent them at support mail - but those translations did not find the way back in hobby-installation.

XP is said to be dead and after awaiting a whole year, there's stil no linux-version arising ...

So I'm a bit disappointed.

Reinhard

40

Mach4 General Discussion / Re: Is Mach4 really Hobby Material?

« on: January 18, 2018, 01:36:31 AM »

Hi,

I didn't run m4 for about a year. Before I loved to work on my own screen, learned lua and created extensions ...
Now I installed the most recent hobby-version and m4 comes up, but as soon as I change to edit mode, I see a crash.
As my message stayed without feedback, I thought: may be it crashes only with my screen.
... and yes: with the provided screens I can enter edit mode, but with my selfbuilt screen it crashes.

So I looked for hints about changes, I have to care about, but there's no history file, no readme and no caution.txt ...

Seems as if I have to throw away my work and start over again. That's not really attractive.
From my point of view, I expect professional software to offer an upgrade-path like the app is able to read an older screen format and writes the current version.
I don't see any way to find out, what tears m4 down - even if I compare both xml-files with a diff-viewer.

So for me it looks like m4 is developed for industrial customers and hobby-users have to live with the giveaways

Reinhard