Soon I will be attempting to use Mach3 to control a Taig CNC mill with a Gecko G540 based controller system. I have a choice of two computers to accomplish this. The first is a Compaq Presario 6300US Desktop PC with a 1.4 GHz Celeron processor and 512MB RAM.  The second I built with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz processor and 3GB RAM. Both have one motherboard based parallel port. I realize that the Compaq is by far the weaker system but I would prefer to use it if it is adequate as the other system has many other uses.

For an operating system I can choose between Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Professional. Which is the easiest to set up Mach3 with and which is the most reliable?

Any other tips or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

onboard graphic's on both?

TramAlot,

The Presario graphics is built into the motherboard. The one I built has a GIGABYTE GV-NX76G256D-RH Geforce 7600GS 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Silent Pipe, Lead Free Video Card.

lead free  , i'd go dual core. but then there is the smoth steper thing:)

good luck

The Compaq should be plenty to run Mach but the onboard graphics may or may not be a problem. What to do is load Mach and run the driver test and see how it looks, if its fine then you should be OK. If its not then if you can get your hands on a PCI graphics card you could disable the onboard one and you should be fine.
As for OS, XP is my preference but W2K is also good so maybe W2K on the lesser system as it has less overheads than XP.
Hood

I installed W2K and SP4 then Mach3. I ran the driver test which stated "SYSTEM UNDER MACH3 CONTROL." Under "Pulse Rating" for a few seconds it stated "Pulsing Too Fast" then it stated "System Excellent". Does this mean that Mach3 runs OK on the Compaq?

It should, its not a guarantee but its a good sign Did the line in the graph look smooth with maybe only slight variations, if so then all should be good but the acid test is to try and see.
Hood

Hood,

The line in the graph is mostly smooth with occasional small spikes.

Thanks again for your help.

Should work fine then

Hood

Well it does work, sort of. It did not work at all at first because the parallel port was not in EPP mode. For those of you thinking of using a Compaq Presario 6300US holding down the F10 button on boot gets you into the bios to change this.

After this fix, I got the axes to jog, sort of. When I try the Y- the mill does Z+. When I try the Z- the mill does Y+. When I try the 4+ the mill does X-. The X jogs do nothing. How do I correct this? Also, how do I set the limits on axis travel?

Thanks again for your help.