Why do you and Chaoticone ( apparently an administrator) plug the Smooth stepper rather than answer the OP's question. Why don't you post in the smooth stepper topic area instead of the ncPOD? Is the use and development of the ncPOD unwelcome here?
Possibly because the Smooth Stepper is a work in progress and it quite up to date.
Greg is addressing problems and the plug in is also being worked on.
Hood can't comment on the NC Pod as he doesn't have one.
I do and it has serious problems in locking up and I'm not the only person to have this.
Do a search on the Yahoo list to see.
I have tried many things to get by this, new computers [ 5 in all ] which all work on the parallel port, upgrading firmware and plug in's.
I even borrowed a NC Pod off John Prentice who has exactly the same problems and that was the same as mine.
There is no pattern to the hang up, can be just into a program or anywhere else, all you get is the Mach screen still running and a message at the bottom saying NC Pod has stopped responding.
Problem is you don't know where as Mach is still running so the job is scrap.
You have to reboot to get out of it.
It was a good idea but the support was never there for it, mine sits abandoned on the bench with John's at the side, he never even wanted his back...
I will shortly be working with the Smooth Stepper as I want it for a high speed threading lathe.
John S.