ok, I installed home switches on the little chinese 3040Z-DQ (connected with the RTM200 USB adapter). It now references all axes successfully and obeys to the soft limits when active. The thing that troubles me is that, when I toggle the "machine coordinates" OFF, the soft limits apply to the active offset coordinate system(G54 or G54+). The true mins and maxs are no longer respected. Hence, I am forced to have 'machine coordinates' ON while jogging to retain the protective benefit of the soft limits function. Am I missing something in the configuration? Is it a glitch of my hardware setup or....??
Thank you community. Stay good. 

I suspect this type of behavior is particular to the RTM USB adapter that came with the router to connect to my laptop. When I start the software with the parallel port plugin instead of the RTM200.dll, Mach3 does a perfect job at respecting the true soft limits irrespective of the status of the "machine coordinates" button. This is in offline mode ofcourse.

I guess someone with a like outfit could verify my observations.

Hi,
soft limits only make sense when the machine is referenced or homed.

Your original parallel port device would retain the machine coords from your last session and provided the tool
position has not moved it will retain a 'close enough reference' from the last session and therefore the soft limits
are 'close enough' too.

In fact over successive sessions the reference will slip and therefore your soft limits will also be inaccurate.

The correct procedure is to Home your machine every time you start up.

That is what you USB controller is expecting.

Craig

Indeed! Everything is good in the respect of retaining home position over successive sessions. Nevertheless, I do home at every session start, just as you point out. The problem is that toggling "machine coordinates" on/off also toggles the origin of the soft limits from machine origin to work(offset) origin. For some reason it does not recognize the absoluteness of the soft limits. Is there something I am missing?