I have purchased a Joes 2006 with a Hobby CNC motor controller. I had a Windows 7/64 bit computer that I know will not work with Mach 3. I installed a hard drive, loaded XP (sp3) and I added a parallel port card.
I have completed a successful Test Drive and Mach 3 says it is in control.
I have found the correct pin configuration for my motors (X2,3, y4,5, z6,7) and I have LPT1 communicating (I can reset the estop and it will stop blinking.)
I cannot get it to run...the motors are loaded (wont turn by hand) and getting warm and if I pull the parallel cable or turn off the computer I do get a distinct clunk from the CNC. I have tried entering Gcode directly also.
This machine did work successfully on an older XP machine (person I bought it from).
Is the computer having a 64 bit processor, even though it is running XP, my issue?
If I purchase MACH4, and use the parallel port plug in, should that work on my computer? I understand it will be slow and I will need to either get a new motor controller or purchase the smooth stepper but I really just want to make it run a little and then I wlill go for perfomance.
Thanks