hi there, i am hoping someone can put an end to days of misery and frustration with my vista pc running mach3.

ok, background information. i have been running my cnc3040t with Mach3 on an old desktop pc for the last 6 months. no problems at all. it has got to the point now where i am looking to upgrade my cnc to a bigger model, but before i do i want to make sure my newer pc running vista will operate the machine. for the past 6 months i have been programming my jobs through Vcarve pro on my HP machine the saving the toolpath onto a USB stick and then putting it in to the desktop pc operating mach3 on the XP machine. and running the cnc machine direct from that.

problem is i now want to eliminate the old xp machine and have everything run from my HP-vista operating system. i have mach3 downloaded onto the machine in trial mode. and can jog around so that the axis controls move. however this machine did not come with a parallel port so i purchased a PCI card from ebay and put it in the machine. system reports this is working fine with no faults.

the problem; when i connect my cnc to the installed parallel port and pull up mach3 nothing moves. the mac3 software moves axis on the screen but no actual output on the cnc its self.

im hoping this is an easy fix solution, however im beginning to loose hope.

any help would be much appreciated.

I think you need to go into Windows Device Manager to establish the Port address of your new PCI card then enter this address into Port#1 (Mach Ports and Pins).

(motherboards with on-board PP usually have the address 0378 but PCI cards will be different).

Tweakie.

thanks for the reply,

i have tried doing that but still with no luck. i have since found out that it may be due to my system is running at 63bit, and  so i have been told mach3 does not support this and will only run on 32bit. i think a new pc is in order here.

thanks for your assistance.

Quite correct, parallel port operation is only available for 32 bit operating systems. One possible option for your 64 bit PC is to use an external motion controller such as the Smooth Stepper.

Tweakie.