mach was milling away and just stopped and then the screen went hazy. the little mouse curser started spinning like it was doing something. this lasted for about 10 minutes untill i ended the program.
blue and green still lit.

i can read just fine but still dont understand it.
i can hook up non usb 5volt real quick....

the ss is holding on the flood and chip auger relays too. even with it unplugged from the pc.

well, after just leaving it off for lunch it now works again but has the red light blinky fast.
is there a code book for this?

The red light should be "blinky fast". If it's not "blinky fast", the SS us stuck/has lost communication with the PC. Unplug the SS, plug it in again, start Mach3 again. Should be OK now.

The red LED isn't blinking any code, and there are no "code books" for this.

The hopelessly out of date SS manual on the Warp9 web site explains the LED activity. Red should be solid until you load Mach, which is loading the SS plugin, which in turn loads the firmware into the SS. The SS firmware loads every time, it's not stored onboard the SS when it's powered down. Once the firmware is loaded and communication is established, the red LED blinks. If you're running and the red LED STOPS blinking, and you only have blue and green LED's, it's stuck and has lost communication, as I said above. The losing communication is the issue that all the talk has been about for years, regarding grounding, external power for 5v, powered USB hub, removing a resistor and capacitor on the SS, noise getting into the system, all sorts of stuff. The plugin version can even change this!! And as Jeff has pointed out, the Mach3/SS config setup.

It's frustrating when this  happens, but I've personally never had it happen when just running along making chips.

ha, so blinking red is good? i swear it has not blinked red yet while running and i have been cutting for a descent amount of time.

well, it did it again so i hooked up the external 5v and will see what happens next. works for now...........

Good day:
I am getting the same scenarrio, and I have the external 5v. Still gets the Loosing data screen. What seems to be happening is the computer is loosing the driver for the smoothstepper, when I unplug it for 10 seconds and than plug it back in the computer re installs the driver, than it works fine, but that doesn't help when I am in the middle of a job, because when you unplug the USB the dro's do not naintain the same readings and I have to start over.
I have done all the suggestions for grounding and unsoldering  , Hooked a ground lead from board to PC. etc. from discussions with Greg. Have dissabled all the computer auto updates and is not connected to the internet. Have no idea what the problems are, but would sure like to get them fixed..

Toad

Usually this is because Windows is turning off the USB port. Go to: http://www.soigeneris.com/Documentation-content.aspx and look for the SmoothStepper section and download the installation tips. It will tell you how to disable the automatic power off 'feature' from WinXP.

Thanks Jeff;

I did not know about this, I will give it a shot, It sounds like it should work.
Toad