Hi,

First up, I'm a total CNC Noob, so don't be afraid to ask id-10-t questions, I'm moderately pc competent as a windows programmer.
Here is my issue.

I was following the "download install and setup" video on the artsoft site.

I got as far as the driverTest.exe step (not very far alas)

First time I ran it, i got a line with a single big jag, and then the box hung.

I wasn't sure if you were supposed to use special driver for any crashes or just blue screens, but I went ahead and tried it.

Now everything on driver test seems to work, it starts give preparation successful, says system under mach3 control, then sits, eventually i get a popup saying the test was successful ("Mach 1 test complete."), but I never see any line whatsoever, not at all.

I can only assume this is a bad thing. Is it?

I've been testing the system with a vb app written by the guy I bought the controller board and the steppers from(stepperworld.com) and it
works pretty well (except for some momentary binding of the drive screws that I assume must be because I'm using all thread from HD, which isn't perfectly smooth?)

Any help is appreciated greatly.

I followed the rest of the tutorial and everything seems to work, but no motion when i hit the jog buttons and no movement on the axis position window at the center top of mach 3 when i try to run gcode (which is not surprising)

Thanks,

Eric-

P.S. I wonder if the hang was my box not the software (it's a little flakey, but it's what i have), is there an way to "un" special driver? I don't need a bat just instructions.
P.P.S. Nope, I read the bat file, undid the changes and it hung again, after 2 refreshes. so the original driver does seem to crash my box. Going to re-special driver again

Eric,
  Welcome to the mach forum!  lots of good help here; but until they arrive, let me ask you a few
questions about your system.
   No motion when you jog?.. go to top of mach screen click "config", click"ports and pins",
click "motor outputs"  put a green check mark under enable beside x, y, z, and see if you can jog. 
  Also, under "ports and pins" check that"port 1" is enabled.
   Let's go from there to see if your axis position changes. If not we'll try something else.

  Good luck!
     Glenn
 

 

Never had your problem with the driver screen. Did you reboot the PC after installing MACH?
RICH

Hi, Eric

Some systems need the Spc. driver, Describe your Comp. a little, Win XP or 2000, CPU speed, Mem........

In Mach3, Ports & Pins, Device Mgr, your Printer port address should match the one you see in Device Mgr, P/Port Address.

You may need to set it in Mach3, If there are 2 or non-std address.

Chip

Thanks for the help!

Addressing questions as i go through them,

1. Yes I rebooted after installing Mach 3. and twice since then (when it hung my machine running Drivertest.exe)

2. X,Y,Z are enabled on the config->ports and pins-> Motor output screen, pins are setup matching docs from card manufacturer (he even sent me a pic of his mach 3 screen so i could double check)

3. Port 1 is enabled, and set to ox378, the same setting as my printer driver, and the same setting as the test harness which does move the steppers

4. System is an xp box, amd xp 1500+ 512mb ram, Dx 9.0c, Nvida GeForce 4 ti 4200 graphics, gobs of HD space, fairly recently Reimaged from scratch, basically it was used for my son to play WOW, and surf the web before being re-tasked to Mach 3. it's always been a little flakey, hanging once a day or so when in hard use, built it myself (last time I did that I spent month dickering with it and it never did work 100% right, sigh built 3-4 machines before that that worked great.)

5. Per pic I checked to see that Mach 3 driver is installed and shows to be working correctly. Ports are still 378, only shows on iop range not two like inyour pic, and does not show any other lines other than the io range 0378-037f

Still no Jogging on the jog screen for via arrow keys, drivertest.exe still shows no lines at all
Pulse per secs in 25khz mode window blank, cpu speed 1363, apc timing constant blank... sits like that.. then I get "mach1 test complete"

Thanks,

Eric-

Caladin

have you upgraded your motherboard bios.you might need to check on that.and also check your bios settings for your printer port so it is set for a dual function if you can.
you said your computer was a little flaky in the past. so you might need to do this before you mess with mach3.

bill

Might want to try to redownload Mach and reinstall just in case you got a bad download. Stranger things have happened. You should back up your xml to a thumb drive or something external before you do though.

As Bill said, check to drivers for the MOBO and if the Parallel port is an add on, check the drivers for it as well.

Good advise Bill.

Brett

Hi, Eric

Try uninstalling the mach3 driver, see pic, Then reinstall the special driver if it's the one that's at least not causing things to lockup, Then  run the Driver Test again.

Pic  2, Diagnostic Screen, Your not seeing a Pulse Frequency or Time in Int. Values ether ?

Are you sure the Printer port works with a printer ?

Chip

Brett

How far is your shop from myrtle beach,I might stop by and visit one day.

bill

Bill, I'm about 2.5 hours from Myrtle Beach. About 60 miles south of Charlotte NC

Brett