My printer port is not working.  I am using a Lava PCI parallel port card, 32 bit Win 7 and latest Darwin.  Device manager says that I have a Lava DParallel PCI Port A (LPT3) at FFF0-FFF7 and Port B (LPT2) at FFF8-FFFF.

In DarwinTest i have tried port addresses FFF0 and FFF8.  I have set Signal #3 to be the Index pulse on Port 1 Pin 10. I don't see any change in pin states when I change the index pulse state. 

Also, maybe not relevant now, but I don't see any evidence of Darwin in Mach 4 despite putting the Darwin plugin in the plugins directory and the DLL in the program directory.

 I would think 0xfff0 should work. You should be able to toggle a pin
in darwins config though and see it happen on the pin. If it doesnt happen the IO address
is wrong for that plug. It coudl be fff2 or fff4 , hard to say, Im not familiar with that card.

Art

I couldn't get the Lava cards working, but I realized that the computer has a standard printer port at 0x378 and that works fine.  I wish I could remember why I wasn't using that to begin with.

When I start Mach4, I see a dialog box titled "Error" which says "Failed to load shared library 'mcDarwin.m4pw' (error 0: the operation completed successfully).  I see that file in my Plugins directory.

When I installed Darwin, I got a dialog which said "Setup has detected that your Visual C++ 2008 runtime files are out of date. Click OK to install this technology now or Cancel to abort the setup. 

When I click OK, I get a dialog that says "Visual C++ 2008 runtime cannot be installed due to the following requirements: ... The Visual C++ 2008 runtime cannot be installed on this operating system... Due to this failure, it is recommended that you abort the install.  Click OK to abort the setup or Cancel to continue with the application install.

Mitch:

  Sounds like an old Darwin... is that the current version?

Art

It's the current version - 2.2763.  I installed the Visual C++ 2008 runtime from Microsoft's site and now I can see Darwin in Mach 4.

In Darwin Test mode, the motors jog smoothly.  But when I move them in Mach, they sound different - gravelly and it seems likely they are losing steps.

Can anyone help!

Can you clarify, that with no licences , for Mach4 hobby or The Darwin Printer port software;

That Mach4 will run in trial mode (15 mins run time) and work the motors.

I am having trouble getting anything moving at present.

Can see the driver is working as it toggles leds from port input pins.

Have a posting in Mach4 general discussion ,Topic: Mach4 Hobby and Printer port - Licence verification

Cheers  Mark

Hi Art,

Can you help, as I am stuck.

Purchased a Darwin Licence, Mach4 still running unlicensed.

I have a good working system with Mach3, so can verify the ports work ok.

Have been setting up mach 4 with one motor , charge pump probe and estop.

The estop, and probe seem to work ok, but when I hit the enable button.

I get an error . whenever the enable is first pressed:-
________________
Signal 5 set to 1
Darwin Buffer error - Motion Out of Bounds.
Signal 5 set to 1
_____________
I have put screen shots of all the settings in the word pad file.

Have tried everything to no avail.

Must be something quite simple and stupid that I have have done !

Kind Regards

Mark

Hi Mark:

   I tried to answer the email you sent me, but for some reason the mail itself locked up my thunderbird.. Couldnt read it, though I
could see your name as sender.

   So your getting an out-of-bounds error?  In pretty much every report of "Out of Bounds", the error
turned out to be the speed was set too high for the motors. But you shouldnt get that on enable, only on motion.

    What doe the error log show, and what do the versions in Darwins config page show. On the page with the slider for freq, there are two numbers
in the upper right corner of the config. What do they show.

Art

Hi Art,

Thanks for the quick reply.

At work at present so will have to sort out the extra info when I get home.

Which folder do I look in for the error log?

Kind Regards

Mark