The official word...

'Mach3's feature set is complete, while Mach4's will continue to expand.  If you are new to cnc, Artsoft highly recommends using and learning Mach4 even if it appears that Mach3's feature set will be adequate for your needs'.

Tweakie and Rich are just two Dina-saws  

Tweakie.

Thanks for the replies, guys. I am somewhat challenged with a lot of things and have some, very limited, experiencing using Mach3. So, sticking with Mach3 would be easier but I think it would just be wiser to suffer a little more and go with Mach4.

Does anyone know how to adjust the screen in Mach4?  It doesn't look right and I can't see the bottom of the screen. Tweakie told me how to fix it in Mach3 but haven't been able to sort it for Mach4.

Sorry, also wanted to ask about the ESS. I followed the instructions on the Warp9 site and got it up and running on Mach3. Can you have the ESS running on the same computer and run the lathe on Mach3 and the mill on Mach4, just by swapping the ESS between both machines and without changing anything on the ESS?  Hope that makes sense?  I was planning to buy a new motion controller but just sank my budget so that will have to wait a bit.

Also, does anyone have a Mouser part number for the ESS's power plug?

Thanks!

Hi,
I think you could use the ESS that way. Most who use one ESS/PC for two different machines use the same version of Mach. Both varieties allow you
to run different profiles and each profile 'programs' the ESS firmware so the fact that one lot of firmware is Mach4 oriented and the next lot Mach3 oriented
won't matter a damn to the ESS.

I suspect you would need multiple BoBs, one for each machine and plug the correct one in prior to using that machine.

My goto electronics supplier is Element14, can't help with Mouser.

Craig

Hi,
just been fiddling with Mach4s screen size....

Operator/Edit Screen....select your screenset, the topmost entry in the Screen Tree Manager...select properties rather than events in the Properties panel
and there will be displayed Design Width and Design Height. My current screen set was 1024 x 768. If I enter 780 <enter> and the exit screen edit by saving I'm done.
Note after typing your desired height in the text box hit <enter> otherwise the new data will be ignored. Now when I fire up Mach it appears on screen at 1024 x 780.

This is a small tweak but you should save it to a screen set with a distinct name and use that set in your profile. Otherwise when you next update Mach4 the standard
screen set, wx4 for instance, will be overwritten which includes all your little tweaks and they will be lost.

Craig

Thanks, Craig.  I tried to follow along and the screen editor page seemed to change so that I could see the bottom portion.  I'm using 1024x600 as that's what my display is set to.  I went to Screen->Save Screen and restarted Mach4, it took a little while to start up, and the main screen hasn't been fixed.  Confused...

I need to familiarize myself with Profiles and such as I understand what you're saying, but only in theory.  

The netbook I'm trying to use has an Atom 1.66GHz processor, 1 GB RAM, running 32-bit Windows 7...not sure what kind of video card.  This is less than recommended on the Artsoft website.  Anything I will be doing will be simple parts.  Is this computer going to be enough or is it marginal?

I found the View->Load Screen selection and I can see more of the screen but some panels are overlapping. Strange.

Hi,
I think you've adjusted the wrong way, now there is only 600 pixels to squeeze in all your buttons etc, not going
to fit. Try going to 1024 x 800.

I use a little dual core Atom on my mill and it works fine. The only time I notice that it is such a low power CPU
is if I load large files, more than 5Meg, they take forever to load and draw the toolpath. If your patient and wait
for it to load its fine thereafter. If you do 3D carving with 100 Meg files your out of luck, for any normal
milling job your Atom will be fine.

Craig

Hi,
just to add, my Atom doesn't have a video card it uses on-chip graphics,way WAY under par for Mach but it works
fine. I suspect your Atom is similar, that was one of the selling points in its day that 'no video card required!'.
Smurph describes the graphics as awful, may be I'm just low class, I don't mind them.

Craig

Thanks for the added info, Craig.  I've tried 800 and also 500, 1000, etc. and nothing really fixes it.  I've discovered that you can resize the individual panels and such, but it's like a complete redesign of the screen would be necessary to fix this.  If I resize a panel, then the individual buttons or titles for the panel are messed up.  This doesn't seem to be the way to go.

I don't quite get it.  Mach3 had a super easy one click fix.  Do you think there's some other function hidden somewhere that will just fix it without modifying everything?  I will have enough on my plate just to figure out how to use Mach4 without first having to learn to design my own screen.