Hi Everyone,

This is my first post, I'm happy to say I have a new desktop CNC machine on the way and I already have a question.

I have a Dell M6400 Mobile Workstation, this is a high end 'laptop' basically a 'workstation' grade machine in a mobile case. I also have a docking station that provides extra I/O including the required parallel port that I'm told I need. I'm currently running Win7 pro 64bit, but it has dual internal drives so I can install XP Pro 32 bit for example and boot to that.

Even though I could buy a cheap desktop with a decent Graphics card for the job, I'm not really fond of another machine at the home, I'm an Apple Engineer so we already have too many boxes around the place.

So I'd like to have my docking station attached via parallel port and then dock the Mobile Workstation once I need to run the CNC machine.

Can anyone tell me why this wouldn't work? I did read somewhere about issues with the processors but I cannot see that being an issue with my machine.

Thanks for any help and advice, I intend to record my progress and share my experiences on the forums.

The issues are the ower saving features of laptops which throttle the CPU to save power, try it and see, it may be ok or it may not.
Now the parallel port, how does it actually connect, in other words is it a true parallel port or some form of emulated port via USB or? If the latter then it will likely not work.
Hood

Thanks Hood,

I'm doing just that - giving it a try, thanks for the reply and I'll let you know.

Cheers

If it doesnt work there is always the option of an external controleer such as the SmoothStepper, Ethernet ones are the best I would say but USB ones work well for most.
Hood