Give us hobbyists everything we need to become professional! ;-)

I've decided to take a look on Mach4 too.

It is just a small visual issue I've encountered.
Mach configuration window.

"Initialization codes" and "Delays" fields are not big enough and part of the values is hidden and we should use the mouse to select it. Also, I doubt anyone here needs such a precise value of the mist and coolant delay. Maybe they should be limited to 1/2 decimals.

Installed Build 1767
XP Home 32bit
4gb Ram
2.6ghz Dual Core AMD Athlon

When launching Mach 4, window is blank and a pop up window stating "Connecting Toolpaths"  will hang there for at times, 2 minutes. But if i minimize window and then Restore window, pop up window is gone and Mach screen set is loaded.

Another note....Dont know if this is meant to be like this or not, but didnt notice this extra step on the first Build release when configuring the Keyboard plugin.....
Keyboard plugin needs to be enabled and configured, but can not select a key until Mach4 is restarted.
After restart then i can select a key to assign.
Then restart Mach4 again to enable the keys.

Also Mach4 idles at 40% CPU and about 225 MB of Ram

Thanks again,
Troy

When launching Mach 4, window is blank and a pop up window stating "Connecting Toolpaths"  will hang there for at times, 2 minutes. But if i minimize window and then Restore window, pop up window is gone and Mach screen set is loaded.

I see the exact same thing on 32bit XP

Also Mach4 idles at 40% CPU and about 225 MB of Ram

The CPU usage is somehow related to what's going on in the screenset. Mine is at 50% with the default screen, but drop to 0-5% with a screen with just a toolpath and a few buttons on it.

You can lower the refresh rates in the screen editor.  Click on the top element in the Screen Tree Manager and it is the "Refresh Interval".  It defaults to 50ms.  100ms would be more of a Mach3 speed.

Steve

In build 1767 there is still a bug with metric conversion.  I have my profile configured as Metric and the motor speed set to 10,000mm/m but G0 or jog show a feed rate of 254,000.

Calum

The bug goes deeper than that (experience based on build 1767-2):
Motor configuration does not depend on mm or inch. But whenever I switch to metric system (and restart Mach4), feedrates are magically lowered by factor 25.4 (inch to mm conversion factor) both with Simulator and real device plug-in (ESS).
This is also the case for the output steps on my motor, which doesnt do a full rotation anymore (when in "inch mode"), but only a small fraction of a circle (~ 10 degree).

The only workaround atm is to keep Units mode to "inch". I can live with that

Seems to be regression, because metric system worked fine in previous version(s) like in 1529 and 1593. It also seemed to work in 1646, though there the feedrate is multiplied by 4. (Those three versions haev been tested with Sim plugin.)

You can lower the refresh rates in the screen editor.  Click on the top element in the Screen Tree Manager and it is the "Refresh Interval".  It defaults to 50ms.  100ms would be more of a Mach3 speed.

Steve

I tried that, but I went the wrong way.   Wasn't thinking clearly last night.

You can lower the refresh rates in the screen editor.  Click on the top element in the Screen Tree Manager and it is the "Refresh Interval".  It defaults to 50ms.  100ms would be more of a Mach3 speed.

Steve

That worked for me. Launches to a complete screen set within a few seconds and uses about 2-5% CPU with about 10-12MB of RAM. Much better

Thanks,
Troy

Just so you guys know...  There is nothing wrong with using CPU.  If it makes the machine more pleasant to operate with faster refresh rates, then there is no reason not to have it.  But there is a limit since we are running on top of an operating system.  I have on machine (pretty new) that I have set to 10ms refresh rates.  My older machines can't take as much.  So we decided to make that a "tunable" setting.  That way, you can get it to run on just about any machine in the XP era. 

It is just not the CPU though.  It has a lot to do with the video card as well.  Some video cards use the CPU to do the video processing!  Those are the ones that will eat CPU like it is going out of style with the faster refresh rates.

Steve

Create a new blank screen.
Add a page.
On the new page, add a bitmap sized to fill the background. Keep the Z order of the bitmap at 0.
Add a DRO on the page, with a Z order of 1.
Save.

When you click the maximize button, the DRO disappears. You can get it to reappear by clicking on it. Occasionally, i've seen a "ghost" duplicate of the DRO next to the actual DRO when clicking on it with Mach4 maximized.

32bit XP Pro.

EDIT:
The "ghost" DRO is the selected DRO text from clicking on it, but it's in the wrong location. The same text (unselected) appears in the correct location.