Windows based PC's would have to be the worst choice you could make for a realtime controller, think about things like plug'n'play, GUI windows/gadgets, multitasking, video, sound and more besides. That the PP driver works as well as it does impresses the hell out of me no matter how many bits it uses. Also the fact that there appears to be no competeion to M3 for PC's suggests that Art's work is extremely clever.

If you went to buy a controller, say Fanuc or Seimens for $10k or whatever, would you expect to find it can also 'surf', play games etc, HELL NO!! Multi horsepower spindles spinning thousands of rpm backed by horsepower level axis servos worth $100k plus all going west because the missus skypes you to get some milk on the way home.

I am not so certain that 32bit and PP are near death either. I have just bought a single board computer, Atom based. There is loads of them out there in all manner of configurations and to rugged industrial spec. Have yet to receive it so may have bought a load of trouble, using Windows 7 Embedded Standard (32bit at my option).
I have every reason to believe these devices and software products will be around for a long time to come

I have spent $8k building my machine and hundreds of hours machining cast iron etc. Why would I not spend $1k and some time to make a suitable controller and protect myself against injury first off and my investment secondly?

Whinging about '64bit support', particularly given the SS solution, seems to ignore the real fact I/we can indulge in innovative CNC for cheap as chips. I was not so 20 years ago, even 10 years. I say go Art and collaborators/community and devil take the whingers!

BOB would it not be simpler to just use your OLD PC for Mach3 and your machine then use the  WIn7 64bit for your design work and SUCH???

Just a thought, (;-) TP

Maybe someone has already posted this, but if everyone is wanting to run 64 bit to do their CAD/CAM work on and then run Mach, why not use Virtual box to run both 32 and 64 bit on the same machine?? yea it's not the perfect solution but it would work.

Because it won't work.

ger21
i take it you have tried it and found it not to work. i haven't played around with virtual computing yet but was thinking about it. is there a reason that you can explain why it won't work?

If you look in Device Manager on a computer on which Mach3 is installed (and runs!), or more particularly the 'pulse engine' part of Mach3, the
all important paralell port driver, you will see it listed as a physical peice of hardware.

All of the posts I have read indicate that the  pulse engine will not run on a virtual machine. You, me and any number of others would love it to be the case but it is not so.

Somone prove me wrong!

If you look in Device Manager on a computer on which Mach3 is installed (and runs!), or more particularly the 'pulse engine' part of Mach3, the
all important paralell port driver, you will see it listed as a physical peice of hardware.

All of the posts I have read indicate that the  pulse engine will not run on a virtual machine. You, me and any number of others would love it to be the case but it is not so.

Somone prove me wrong!

The reasons to use a 64 bit operating system (other than pride and/or bragging rights) is if you are dealing with massive amounts of data and/or need massive amounts of memory. Neither is the case with MACH. My development computer is 64 bit because it is required by Adobe video editing software and the additional memory is put to good use by that software as well as compilers and my animation/visualization software. Complaining that MACHx does not run correctly under a 64 bit version of windows is equivalent to complaining that is does not run on an Apple OS or unix or solaris or whatever.   CNC controllers definitely should be dedicated machines, so just build one that meets the published system requirements.

Just because a service shows up on a list does not mean it is functioning correctly. You can have drivers floating around from devices you removed long ago. Sometimes you cannot remove a driver after you have removed the device because the driver checks for the device, does not find it and concludes 'I am not actually here'.

You would also need to understand the difference between open and closed loop. Not as it pertains to CNC motors, but in general. If software is sending data into a black hole on a wing and a prayer (open loop) then it will run along happily even when the data is not getting where it is supposed to go.  Task Manager reports that it is running, but that does not mean it is actually doing anything useful.

 

Maybe someone has already posted this, but if everyone is wanting to run 64 bit to do their CAD/CAM work on and then run Mach, why not use Virtual box to run both 32 and 64 bit on the same machine?? yea it's not the perfect solution but it would work.

Virtual machine may be a problem but nothing to stop you having both XP and 7 64bit installed on two HDD or even two partitions running as a dual boot machine, making it possible to boot one machine to either 64bit to run fusion360 to dersign create g-code or 32bit to run mach3 and process g-code, all that is required it to make files accesible to both OS.

The fact of the matter is that it's just not possible to do what Mach3 does on a 64 bit OS.

WHAT?

That doesn't make a bit of sense.  How on earth would a 64bit OS not be able to handle what a 32 bit OS can do?

Mach3 is a 32 bit only with the  p port external controllers what ever they take