I installed a 2nd par port and finally got it working in Mach the card works GREAT, finally, with one small problem.  The card shows 5v on all pins as it should due to internal pullup on the card itself.  When I test the card not hooked up to the machine you can see all my limits LEDS in MAch come on and go off as I ground the pins.  I have everything in active low.  My machine was set up to run NC (normally closed) switches and have 5volts on the system and it would go low when the switch was triggered.  This worked fine with port one (Port one is run through a CNC4PC C10) however after dealing with bad opto chips and massive frustration with the C10 I am runing the second port on a bob I built myself.  Let me take a moment here to say that Art at CNC4PC is taking care of the issue with my C10, he is a great guy please support his work.  I'm also getting a second C10 to run in this control box.  So with port 2, if I hook the port up to my machine running active low and trip a switch nothing happens.  Simply opening the 5 volt circuit is not working as a low signal for the car.  It never sees it as it's still applying 5volts to the pin.  Ok, so I switched the system to run ground through the switches and go active high.  I want currant on the NC switches at all times for an active system, rather then just closing the circuit with a fault happens.  When I do this, the lights go out on Mach3, but none of the switches work.   As I am grounding pins 2-7 you would think that when I open the switch the card would pull up the pin to 5vdc and see a active high signal.  It does not.

In fact when I do this and then test the cad, I get nothing, the pins are dead, luckily a restart of the PC resets the pins to high.


Ok, I'm done, your turn.  Thoughts?

Evan

Nobody has any ideas on this?

Do you have the correct address set for the port? Have you got it set for pins 2-9 as Inputs?
Hood

Yes and Yes. 

Is your pci parallel port capable of using 2-9 as Inputs? I know I had a few that were not. Does it work if you set them as outputs and for example set the coolant to one of the pins and switch coolant on/off.

If you want to attach your xml I can have a look through that although not likely to be much wrong if the port address is set correctly.
Hood

Yes it works as output, and it works as input, the address is correctly.  I can test the port with the cable.  If I ground the pin by plugging in a short piece of wire and tapping it to the ground on the cable the LEDs in Mach toggle just as they should.  However if I plug it into the machine where as all the pins are shorted to ground through the switches then they all just stop working.  Could it be a bad ground or something.  it doesn't hurt the card, they reset fine.

Ok think I understand now, if you ground the pin momentarily then it is fine but if you have it grounded for anything longer than that, then it sticks.
Does that happen if you ground for a while with a wire (rather than momentarily) or is it just when you ground via the BOB?
Hood