Reading through the forum in an effort to fix a problem with lost steps in my X and Y axes and probably my Z axis as well, I came upon the
Windows XP Professional System Optimization Guide which I chose to follow. Now the machine moves at a snail's pace. Really a snail's pace. It's that slow. Rapid traverse is minutes per inch, not IPM. Even so, my slave X axis misses a lot of steps and racks the gantry.
When I run Driver Test, I now get a nice straight line at about 40 microseconds between pulses to about the 200 mark, the the plot goes straight up off the scale for the duration of the test. The test message says my system is excellent, which is just not so. Prior to that, I was getting pulse variations at regular intervals.
Before I started changing things, I had a fairly reliable drift to +Y in the Y axis, and a problem in the X axis that would take the gantry out of square.
My machine is a CRP4896 gantry router w/ NEMA 34 motors and CRP drive electronics. The A axis is slaved to the X axis. The computer is a Dell Optiplex 755 1.6 GHz running XP Pro. Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse, and wired Ethernet to a wireless repeater. I recently added the Rosewill PCI parallel board, which was working normally though still losing steps prior to my following the Optimization Guide.
So now my system is all honked up, and I would very much appreciate some help.
I have attached my XML file for your convenience.