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The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« on: March 15, 2010, 03:15:03 AM »
Hi,

I am hoping someone can shed some light on what this may be.

I have setup a new pc to run my machine.
I have a P4 2.8ghz 1gig ram AIO pc.
Because of my unique issue I believe replacing my pc is not the only answer.

I noticed right from the jump street the steppers sounded horrible. Very choppy.

When you hold the arrow key down to move an axis the DRO numbers on the screen don’t fly by, they are jumping (cant remember if its .001 or 10thousands increments but its not in step mode) and the steppers are in sync with what the screen is showing. If I tell it to move 1" or w/e it acts just the same as if I held the arrow key down. So I know it's nothing to do with step and jog.

Heres the catch, If I reboot and soon as windows starts loading and i can open mach3 I can run the steppers smooth as silk (perfect) for about 30seconds then something must load i guess and I cant find what it is and the steppers and mach3 start acting choppy, and the keyboard response time is lagged but only in mach3. Jump to notepad all is fine.
I have turned off about every service I can get away with, pulled and disabled my pci wifi card (all in one pc, this one has one full size pci slot in the back) but that didn’t change any thing.

Anyone run across this issue?
BTW I tried the special driver but it didn’t work at all.

Thanks,
Eric

Offline Hood

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Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« Reply #1 on: March 15, 2010, 03:20:21 AM »
Have you run the driver test to see what the pulse is like?
Have you tried the optomisation steps detailed on the downloads page?
Hood
Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« Reply #2 on: March 15, 2010, 03:29:49 AM »
Hi Hood,

THe Driver Test prepares, starts and locks the pc up.
How ever before I locks up a do see a few seconds of line info.
Lots of high spikes.

How ever I have not tried this as soon as the pc is turned on.
I would bet its nice and clean for the first half minute after windows comes up.

I have not tried the optomisation steps.
I have never had this kind of issue even with my other cnc machine running on a 900mghz laptop.

I will give it a look. Is the info easy to find?
Do you have any other ideas that I can try as I am doing your other sugestions and or why the system locks up during driver test?

Thanks,
Eric
Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« Reply #3 on: March 15, 2010, 03:53:14 AM »
Hi,

I had the same problem, driver test very bad and locked up thePC.
Followed hoods suggestion and its been perfect- not a glitch.

Makesure you follow the optimisation VERY steps carefully - I missed a step and it was the one that was causing the problem, so my driver problem only was rectified when I re-checked all theoptimisation steps ;-) ) - measure twice and all that !
ATB
Derek

Hi Hood,

THe Driver Test prepares, starts and locks the pc up.
How ever before I locks up a do see a few seconds of line info.
Lots of high spikes.

How ever I have not tried this as soon as the pc is turned on.
I would bet its nice and clean for the first half minute after windows comes up.

I have not tried the optomisation steps.
I have never had this kind of issue even with my other cnc machine running on a 900mghz laptop.

I will give it a look. Is the info easy to find?
Do you have any other ideas that I can try as I am doing your other sugestions and or why the system locks up during driver test?

Thanks,
Eric
You can "chop it off" but can't "chop it on"

Offline Hood

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Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« Reply #4 on: March 15, 2010, 04:07:30 AM »
Is the info easy to find?

Its on the downloads page near the bottom but heres a direct link.  http://www.machsupport.com/downloads/XP_Optimization.txt
Hood
Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« Reply #5 on: March 15, 2010, 01:26:51 PM »
ACPI to standard pc worked like a champ!

Now I just got to figure out what the hell is going on with my Xylotex board.
Z axis isnt moving. Pins are right IC is warm.
(I had to fix the X IC while back when there dead there cold)

I tried all the typical stuff DRO read moving but nothing on the motor.
Moved the motor over to another axis IC and the Z works there so motor wiring is fine.

Some where between the software and board...

Thanks for your help guys, never had to do that even on my laptop for my other mahcine.

Eric
Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« Reply #6 on: March 15, 2010, 01:28:03 PM »
Oh and the Z stepper is locking at least. just not moving.

Eric

Offline Hood

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Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« Reply #7 on: March 15, 2010, 04:17:35 PM »
Sounds like the drive is the problem, you could check the output from the port with a scope if you have one, if not then a volmeter will give you some info. Disconnect the parallel cable and connect the voltmeter between the Z Dir Pin and a Gnd Pin (18 - 25) and jog the Z one way then the other, if you see the voltage change between 5v and 0v depending on jog direction that means the Dir is fine. Do the same again but this time the Step, you will only see a slight change in voltage as you jog because it is a pulse but as long as you see a change in voltage you know that it is working. If that checks out then you know its the drive.
Hood
Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« Reply #8 on: March 15, 2010, 04:39:55 PM »
Well I have an update.

My other machine runs the same controller  (I plan on running my geckos I bought 13 months ago after all is running)
So I hooked that machines laptop up to this machine I am working on and the Z moves fine.
So then I thought well maybe its the cable.
I unplugged the cable from the AIO pc to the laptop and it still runs fine.

So something isnt right with the Port on the AIO pc.
Pinouts in Mach are the same on both Pc's.

So now I am down to trying to figure that out.

Eric

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Re: The Craziest thing I've seen thus far...
« Reply #9 on: March 15, 2010, 04:47:00 PM »
Just double check you have both the Step and Dir pins set to port 1.
If they are and you have them set the same on both computers then it would see your port is bad.
Hood