On my PC I installed a Netgear311(C1) network card.
This card I used to connect my Smoothstepper to whilst the PC onboard Ethernet network is used to connect my PC to the Internet.
That's the theory anyway.

I found that I could not ping the Smoothstepper with this configuration.
I removed the Netgear card and plugged the smoothstepper into my PC's network port and managed to ping my smoothstepper and I'm now at the MAch4 configure ports and pins etc.
This looks really daunting but I'll have to go slowly.

So all looks well except that now I will not be able to connect to the internet!!!!  I think the Netgear card is a duffer because I switched my cables around and tried to access yhe inter whilst connected to this card!!!

So!! where do I go from here ??  Help please.  ( I am learning (Promise))

Hi,
sounds like your PC has not correctly installed the new card. This is a Windows problem not Mach or ESS.

Got to Control Panel/Network and Sharing and establish whether Windows has recognized and installed the new card.
You realize of course that it is not recommended that your PC be connected to the internet or in fact any network
AND the ESS.

Craig

Thanks Craig, I do believe the card is a duffer.

I did not realise that I should not be connected to the internet when mach4 is running.

I thought I read somewhere that it was ok if the Smoothstepper was on it's own card, maybe I misunderstood it.

Anyway, I'm at the cofig ins and outs now so the ess is installed ok.
I''l take your advice and leave it now as it is.

Thanks

George

Hi,
someone once described......'once you have your computer hooked to and controlling a machine it is a MACHIINE CONTROLLER....
no longer a PC.......its a machine controller that happens to use Windows as an operating system'.

Craig

Got it! thanks Craig.

Support for the Smoothstepper is excellent on the Warp9TD forum (not saying it is bad here  ). Don't be afraid to reach out for help there too.

I have 2 Network Interface Cards (NICs) on my PC. I use one for the Smoothstepper and one for the internet. I have never seen issues with running the internet on my machine PC, but I disable the port before running Mach regardless.

The Smoothstepper requires a static IP address for your computer (not DHCP) so that will prevent you from accessing the internet on that port unless you do some non-standard configuration of your router/modem upstream. I would not recommend running internet and motion control traffic on the same network under any conditions.

I believe Andy has sorted the problem over at warp9td