Hey thanks for the reply,
I actually need something from Mach4 to initialize a check on the motor. Essentially I am trying to create an extra level of safety in the case of a wire fault or any other reason signals might not get to the motors. I am using clearpath motors, which will know if they are out of position, but if a signal fails to reach them, they won't know they missed anything.
I had a strange incident when Mach4 stopped sending step and direction signals intermittently when jogging. The whole program was behaving erratically and was fine after a restart, but it was enough to make me want to create a way for the clearpath motor to verify that it is moving when Mach thinks it is.