BR,
THANKS very much! You are most helpful and right on the money . . as usual.
Additional detail; the calling macro still has to be with it's buddies in macro land. I had already tried a qualified name a couple of different ways and that is still not working. That was obviously the problem because when I put the script under \Mach3 all is well. I'm on Win7 64bit so that may be a factor.
For inquiring minds, the application here is to monitor Mach for any A axis moves and take action if the 4th axis is either disabled or not in index mode. If there is no program running, the operator just gest a warning. If there is a program running, it is stopped and the operator then gets a message. Working nicely now and after it is debugged and reliable, I will expand it to cover the servo controlled spindle as well.