I have a home built 3 axis machine with a slave A axis for X travel. It has been working fine with a HY-CLX-S four-axis stepper motor control box.
I decided to upgrade to larger motors and use a Longs breakout board (db25-1205) with 4 drivers. It came as a kit with the motors. I have the new motors installed on the machine and I can't seem to get a signal output on pins 2-9. Only pins 17,16,1,14 seem to work. I have been searching for 3 weeks now and I cant seem to find anyone with the same problem.
For example when I set Y axis to pins 2 and 3 for step and direction I get no movement or signal change. It is a constant 5 V.
If I change it to 17 and 16 for step and direction It works! Any combination of 17,16,1,14. I can assign any of those 4 pins to any one of the 4 axis and I get motion.
But nothing on 2-9! They all read 5 V.

I have changed the breakout board for a new one. Same exact problems. Re-installed Mach3 - no change. I am using an ESS. I purchased a PCI Printer port and couldn't get any communication. I'm running windows 10 so from what I read that wont ever work. So I went back to the ESS.
 Any Help would be greatly appreciated. Or does anyone know of any fairly priced remote login services for troubleshooting mach 3 setups?

Thanks

Hi,
the only thing I can think of is that pins 2-9 can be either all outputs or all inputs. Usually port1 pins 2-9 are outputs, after all you must
have outputs to control your motors. Port 2 however you can configure. Is it possible that you have ports 1 and 2 confused?
You will see it on Config/Ports and Pins page.

Can you post a manual for your new board? Its not impossible that there is a setting on it to make 2-9 inputs which would have the same effect you
describe.

Craig

Craig,
Thanks for the reply. I definitely have the port assigned to port 1. the board I am using seems to be infamous for the lack of documentation but from what little I did find there does not seem to be any settings for choosing all inputs or outputs for pins 2-9. The board is the DB25-1205 sold by longs motor. I spent a few days going back and forth with Longs motor in China and they also gave up and sent me a new board. Which gives the same problem.

Hi,
can you post screen shots of the first four Ports and Pins pages?

Craig

Here are the screen shots. i've played around with different pin numbers for step and direction of each axis. This isn't necessarily the numbers I originally chose.
I really appreciate you taking the time to help.
I don't have any limit switches so there aren't many other settings.

Hi,
rereading your posts and there seems to be some confusion...

I have changed the breakout board for a new one. Same exact problems. Re-installed Mach3 - no change. I am using an ESS. I purchased a PCI Printer port and couldn't get any communication. I'm running windows 10 so from what I read that wont ever work. So I went back to the ESS.

If you are using Windows 10 then your wasting your time with a parallel port, it wont work with a 64bit OS.
If you are using an ESS then the pics you've posted are not really meaningful, they are settings for the parallel
port which of course does'nt work!

Your settings, things like motor outputs must be made in the ESS plugin.

When you first fire up Mach you should be asked which of the available motion plugins you want to use. While its
common to see the parallel port listed don't bother with it, it doesn't work! Find the ESS plugin and fire it up.
If the select screen doesn't show go to Function Cfgs/Reset Device Sel... <ok> and fire up Mach again.

Now that you've got the active motion control plugin you can configure it.

I use Mach4 and am not familiar with how to set ESS in Mach3. The Warp9 website has really detailed instructions,
videos and if you're still stuck the forum.

Craig

Hi marchmade,
how did you get on? Has the ESS played ball and did the Warp9 instructions help?

Craig

Yes thanks so much. You got me looking at the ESS. I emailed Warp9 tech support and they stated that it sounds like port 1 chips were blown on the ESS.
I switched to port 2 on the ESS and everything is working perfectly.
My ESS came inside of an enclosure. I didn't even realize that there were 3 available ports. And the problem started during an upgrade to larger motors So I must have done something that blew the chips on Port1.
I appreciate your help with this. I would have never thought to look at that.

Hi,
kool, glad that you're up and running. Make sure to post the results so that others can benefit from your
experience.

Craig