I discovered an interesting issue with Mach4 and the latest plugin for the Ethernet SmoothStepper. In some cases when starting MACH4, it does not find the ESS. You can verify this by clicking on the diagnostic tab for the Plugin and you will see nothing gets filled in, which is identical to what happens when your firewall is not open to the MACH4 GUI. Keep in mind many times when you start this works, just not 100% consistent. The interesting issue is if you unplug the parallel cable which goes to a breakout board which feeds Panasonic amplifiers for the Panasonic servos, suddenly the motors on the CNC table start moving the table around and I have to kill the power. Seems like many steps are being held in a buffer somewhere and unplugging the parallel cable from the ESS suddenly allows the drives to start moving the motors, very strange. When things come up normally, MACH4 moves all the motors perfectly, all homing works, and Gcode executes. Next is to work on the pendant using POKEYs and Spindle control of the Huanyang VFD. I have not seen anyone post getting a modified version of modbus working with Huanyang products. Thanks
Russ Larson