Hi,
I have had to upgrade my PC again after a frustrating attempt to get a Windows 7, 32 bit OS with a PCI parallel port card working consistently. I did get it to run Mach3 successfully after a lot of tinkering with port addresses and drivers so I am used to the process to get Mach3 communicating with my machine controller. Unfortunately, that PC developed some terminal motherboard problems which required me to press into service a PC that I built for my daughter. It has a clean install of Win 7 32 bit and it is around four years old. My problem is that I swapped out the PCI parallel port from the old PC to the new one and so far it has refused to communicate successfully with Mach3. I have tried all the usual fixes including running the driver test utility, changing the settings in Ports and Pins, multiple reboots, uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers for both Mach3 and the Parallel Port card. I could get the driver test to show a green "system stable" for one or two seconds but it then reverts back to "pulsing too fast". If I reboot the PC and go straight to Mach3 I can get the steppers to run for just a second or two and then nothing. Alternatively I can get the coolant to switch on and off a half a dozen times or so and then again nothing. It is almost as if something breaks the connection after a few tries. I can get the Estop on my pendant to halt the Mach3 communication at any time so there is some communication going on. I have also tried setting the Ports and Pins at every frequency and then trying the driver test. At some frequency's I get nothing (pulsing too fast), at others I get a yellow bar and at some I get a green bar for a short time and then nothing.
I suspected that the Parallel port adaptor I had was somehow not compatible with the motherboard that was in the new PC so I bought a much more expensive Sunix PCI parallel port card and installed that today. I installed the drivers that came with the card and checked that they installed OK but it displays pretty much the same symptoms as the el-cheapo card that I had running in my previous PC.
I am running out of ideas and I am now pleading for any advice from any guru's out there who may have an answer.
I guess I am specifically asking if it is possible for a particular make of motherboard to be incompatible with Mach3. The one that I have is a Gigabyte GA 970A-D3.
I have attached screenshots of two separate driver tests that I ran, one at 35khz and one at 100khz. Neither confirmed that the Parallel port was communicating successfully.
Please help!
Regards,
Preso