Hi,
that is very poor, certainly as is the parallel port would fail utterly to run your machine.
There was, of a time, a list that circulated on the forum about a number of items which could be deleted /set/optimized
for the purposes running a parallel port.
I updated to Mach4 and an Ethernet SmoothStepper 2-
1/
2 years ago and so have had rather less
interest in Mach3's parallel port since.
Your options are:
1) Persevere with the laptop, deleting components and otherwise optimizing it, I estimate only a modest chance of success.
2) Buy yourself another PC, a desktop model Windows7 32 bit or earlier, preferably with a built in parallel port
3) Buy yourself an external controller like an Ethernet SmoothStepper. I have a
very low opinion of Chinese made
controllers, often they don't work at all or don't support all the realtime functions required and you won't get any help
form them when you encounter problems.
4) Take up knitting
The advantage of a good external controller is that then you can run just about any PC you want, XP through Windows 10,
32 OR 64 bit, laptop OR desktop. If you do like the idea of an external controller may I suggest that you get one that
has a Mach4 plugin, then should you wish to update at a later time you can change without the extra cost of a Mach4 ready
controller.
Craig
Guest
