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General Mach Discussion / PCI port card addressing woes
« on: January 29, 2008, 07:31:51 AM »
Hello all
I'm at the end of my rope here.
In principle my machine should work, but I've had no luck in getting mach3 to talk to the PCI parallel port card I've got. It's one of these:
Spec:
Mill: Pinnacle CNC vertical mill, 3-axis stepper, 4hp motor, controlled coolant, spindle, pneumatic brake, pneumatic drawbar. weighs about 2 tons
PC: no-name beige box, 900MHz Celeron, 512MB, no vices as such
Stepper controller: Routout 10-amp controller, works fine
port 1: LPT1 (onboard) works fine and sends the steppers up and down marvellously
port 2: Value twin PCI Parallel port adaptor, RS part number 449-2510, probably a cat in a bag as I've seen the same ones for £8 on Ebay and RS had £40 off me for it
Control/isolation: 9v control circuit, relayed/opto'd for safety, in-house design my m'self. works fine.
The PCI card installs smoothly enough and doesn't throw up any nasties on the way.
When I bring up mach3 it looks for the second port at 0x278, where it's supposed to be. This doesn't work, so I investigated further and went to Device manager to find the resources tab. LPT1 (onboard) has a resources tab, but LPT2 and LPT3 (PCI) do not. Looking through accessories>system tools>system information I can see a list of resources per device. I have the addresses for "multi I/O adapter" and the PCI slots themselves, but having plugged all of the address range start points into Mach3, I cannot get it to see the port at all, ever. I'm using auto-detect to look for a pin being switched on port 2. I've tried with and without my opto board, up to and including a bare cable shorting pins to ground.
looking at the PCI board, all the ground pins are indeed grounded so no issues there.
Is there a way round this? has anyone successfully wrangles one of these miserable cards into line?
Alternatively is there a known board that is better for the job? I've seen the Rogers ones mentioned, they seem very robust, and at the sort of price they are I'd be happy to go for one. I really need the extra inputs/outputs that a second port will give me. British distributors, anywhere?
Thanks in advance - any help appreciated.
I'm at the end of my rope here.
In principle my machine should work, but I've had no luck in getting mach3 to talk to the PCI parallel port card I've got. It's one of these:
Spec:
Mill: Pinnacle CNC vertical mill, 3-axis stepper, 4hp motor, controlled coolant, spindle, pneumatic brake, pneumatic drawbar. weighs about 2 tons
PC: no-name beige box, 900MHz Celeron, 512MB, no vices as such
Stepper controller: Routout 10-amp controller, works fine
port 1: LPT1 (onboard) works fine and sends the steppers up and down marvellously
port 2: Value twin PCI Parallel port adaptor, RS part number 449-2510, probably a cat in a bag as I've seen the same ones for £8 on Ebay and RS had £40 off me for it
Control/isolation: 9v control circuit, relayed/opto'd for safety, in-house design my m'self. works fine.
The PCI card installs smoothly enough and doesn't throw up any nasties on the way.
When I bring up mach3 it looks for the second port at 0x278, where it's supposed to be. This doesn't work, so I investigated further and went to Device manager to find the resources tab. LPT1 (onboard) has a resources tab, but LPT2 and LPT3 (PCI) do not. Looking through accessories>system tools>system information I can see a list of resources per device. I have the addresses for "multi I/O adapter" and the PCI slots themselves, but having plugged all of the address range start points into Mach3, I cannot get it to see the port at all, ever. I'm using auto-detect to look for a pin being switched on port 2. I've tried with and without my opto board, up to and including a bare cable shorting pins to ground.
looking at the PCI board, all the ground pins are indeed grounded so no issues there.
Is there a way round this? has anyone successfully wrangles one of these miserable cards into line?
Alternatively is there a known board that is better for the job? I've seen the Rogers ones mentioned, they seem very robust, and at the sort of price they are I'd be happy to go for one. I really need the extra inputs/outputs that a second port will give me. British distributors, anywhere?
Thanks in advance - any help appreciated.