I would love to be able to buy an "off the shelf" working machine but that not an option since there aren't any other machines like this out there. This is a proof of concept prototype for a new type of high speed industrial 3D printer. In fact this machine will probably be actually running for less time than I have already spent tying to get these control boards to do what I need them to do, which is what is so frustrating. If this was something which was going to be running for a long time or which was the end product then this wouldn't be that bad, but right now it is nothing more than a kluge of DIY parts standing in my way of getting to the next step.
As far is using one output for all the enables I also had that thought, but I will have to probably use a SSR to switch a more powerfully 5v supply than the board can do on one output since I have 10 motors which need to get the signal and each has about 25' of wire to cover. I was hoping to avoid all that by just using the boards outputs directly. But at this point I would be happy if just a single output actually worked. I disabled all outputs except for one Enable signal and still nothing. Started off trying port 1 pin 3 "X Enable" with only it enabled as an output in the ESS plugging and then did the same it Mach4. If set to active High then it's always off, as in no output and the indicator LED is always off. Hitting Enable in Mach4 control screen does nothing. If it is instead set to active Low then it is always on, as in the LED is on and it's sending 5v out. Again completely independent to anything done on the Mach4 control screen. The only thing done with Mach4 it seems to respond to is closing the program, which will disable the output, but as soon as I open Mach4 again the output is back on. Tried the same thing for a couple of other outputs, ones the C25 actually supports, and got the same on all. Also port 2 pin 9 is always on with 2.43v output for some crazy reason.