I have Pokeys and Smoothstepper and it seems to run fine. I think I run Pokeys 10.4. I tried 10.6.4 once and it didn't work, so I quit upgrading Pokeys plugin and just use 10.4. I'm not sure what you mean by "pokeys software running in the background." It's a plugin, and once activated, it should just run. You don't mean the Pokeys software for programming the pokeys, do you? I don't see how that would relate to Mach3 running Pokeys. I guess I don't have much to offer for help. What SS plugin are you using? I'm currently using 17bd, but I've used others all along and Pokeys and SS worked fine together.
One time there was something about load order of plugins, so maybe remove all the plugin dlls from the plugins folder, put them back one at a time, start Mach, activate it, stop Mach, add another. Do you have any other plugins running that might be conflicting. Maybe by reinstalling them one at a time and trying things you can figure out a conflict.
On the FRO brain, I have to do the code 223 line by using Send String and entering 223. If I use DRO and hand enter 223, it shows as OEMDRO 223, not just 223 as yours shows. I tried it with OEMDRO 223 and it didn't work. I have it working fine now.
Thanks again.
Tom