[justgary]

All -

I have looked in the manual and at the schematic, and didn't find the answer to this question:

Four of the pins on the PCNC 1100 auxiliary socket are +12V, +5V, Ground, and one discrete input. Is the remaining pin a discrete output? If so, what G-Code do I use to diddle it on and off?

The schematic shows it not connected, and I didn't think to actually go out and open the cabinet and look until just now.

Regards,

- Just Gary

[justgary]

All -

For completeness I'll answer my own question. Tormach confirmed today that I need to add a second parallel port in order to have a discrete output. Too bad for me, I guess. It's either a second port or rethink my cool little giblet...

Regards,

- Just Gary

[zephyr9900]

Just Gary, I'm more tempted to try a SmoothStepper as time goes on. My own pet project is to have physical LED's on the mill head showing the active jogging axis (to mirror the onscreen "virtual LED's" so I don't need to be a Pierson's Puppeteer to see both the interface and the workpiece simultaneously) and I think that will take three available digital outputs, which are not available on the single current LPT interface. The SmoothStepper, along with FPGA step generation (supposed to be ultra-smooth) emulates two full LPT ports and is USB-connected to the host computer.

Randy

[justgary]

Randy -

As far as I can tell right now, the SmoothStepper is vaporware. It would be interesting to see one on the hoof. My experience with USB serial ports tells me that you'll get a little bit of latency, but maybe they have minimized that with the SmoothStepper. Then again, maybe that's why it's vaporware...

I'm still trying to figure out how I want to proceed with my idea. I don't know what other controllers are available to hook up to another parallel port, so I don't have a good grip on my options yet.

I guess I gotta surf on this for a while...

- Just Gary

[zephyr9900]

As far as I can tell right now, the SmoothStepper is vaporware.

What, what, what? Tell that to Jason3... SmoothStepper isn't a USB-to-parallel port converter--it is an FPGA that generates the step pulses locally. Mach3 only provides the user interface and sends high-level motion commands to the SS (via a plugin), which claims a 4 MHz possible step rate.

Warp9 is quoting a 2-week leadtime right now. By the time my workshop is up and running again (in the indeterminate future...) they might be out of the backlog.

Randy