[GeeBake]

I've been reading through some of the recent threads trying to figure out what kind of machine will run Mach 3 and testing some things and I think I have a few comments and questions.

I just got a laptop. Centrino 1.73. 512 MB of ram etc, etc.

I installed Mach 3 and it seems to run absoltuely fine. I have not used it to actually control a machine, but the sims run with no problems.

I saw a post that theorized that the power step feature could be interfering. I think that's correct. I have the laptop on AC and the cpu power set to max.

I realize that the biggest hurdle in using this laptop for actual control will be the lack of a parallel port. I have tried a Koutech PCMCIA to Parallel adapter and it wouldn't work at all. Not just for Mach. It wouldn't even install properly. I did some reasearch and found that that particular card really does USB emulation anyway so there's no way it would ever work. I just ordered a Quatech PCMCIA to Parallel adapter and I am a bit more confident that it might work. I've read elsewhere that this is a pipe dream and probably won't work, but I'm going to try.

Has anyone ever gotten a laptop to actually use Mach to control hardware? I suppose some older machines with built in Parallel ports might work better, but I'm guessing they wouldn't have the horsepower.

If this doesn't work, I'll just use the laptop for CAD and CAM. I've been running Mach 3 on an ancient P3 desktop (600 I think) and it's fine. I was just hoping to be able to do everything from one machine.

I'd love to hear more from other users concerning exactly what PC hardware they're succesfully using.

Thanks,

Greg


FYI, this is the adapter I intend to use:
http://www.quatech.com/catalog/parallel_pcmcia.php

It will support 5 volts. Here's hoping!

[JRoque]

Hello Greg. For what is worth, I run Mach2 on a PII-400 Mhz laptop. It's not the fastest thing as you might imagine but I safely get 90 IPM jog speed out of it. Mach3, however, seems to be too much for the old PC. There may be some tweaking that can be done to make it work but Mach2 is plenty good for what I need. Actually, adding a 3 axis jog wheel control I design bogs Mach2 down enough to make it rough to use. I'm waiting for Windows 2065 to upgrade ;-)

JR

[GeeBake]

This will probably come as no surprise to most, but I've found that the PCMCIA to Parallel option just doesn's seem to work. I've tried several different cards and spent a great deal of time working with the manufacturers tech support and I just can't get it going. Dang!

Greg

[JRoque]

Hey Greg. So the Quatech card above shows as a regular parallel port with address and IRQ? Does that address match what Mach is looking for? Have you tried any other software to test the parallel port? There are small programs out there that let you turn a pin on and off so you can ensure everything's working.

JR

[JFettig]

I was never able to get my old centrino laptops to run Mach 2 or 3 but my P3 650 laptop runs Mach2 great, I havent wanted to try mach3 because it worked so good in Mach2.

So these pcmcia parallel port cards arent working?


Jon

[jerber]

"I just got a laptop. Centrino 1.73. 512 MB of ram etc, etc"
I believe that Mach X doesn't work on a centrino/pentium M.

"Has anyone ever gotten a laptop to actually use Mach to control hardware? I suppose some older machines with built in Parallel ports might work better, but I'm guessing they wouldn't have the horsepower."

I use a compaq n1015v. It has a AthlonXP 1700 with 512mb.
I run Mach3(demo) with a 25khz kernel. It runs great.
It also runs Solidworks(not great,but that's my videocard),Autocad (2k2, great) and Mastercam 9mill (great).

so it's possible.

Jeroen

[GeeBake]

I couldn't get the card to communicate with Mach at all. Initially, I couldn't get the port set up such that it would save an address that Mach could read. I got an older driver that would allow me to set the address to 378 but it didn't seem to make any difference. I was able to set the IRQ to any value I wanted, but that didn't seem to help either. The only other thing I noticed was that the driver that works in my desktop also uses a DMA. It's an ECP port. I was never able to get the Quatech card to read as an ECP port. Only EEP and standard.

I can see that a Centrino chip could cause Mach problems. Many laptps (mine included) also do some strange things with memory. This machine for example uses system ram for video memory which, I would think, could cause problems.

Who knows? I give up!

Greg

[TOCUCA]

I have a dell laptop
Itried Quatech parallel PCMCIA card (true EPP Port)
part number sw-1485
I had good luck with X - Y - and Z axis.
the only problem a had was the motors were skipping steps every now and then.
all axis were moving smooth.
I call tech support from dell ,from quatech and got no where.

last thing i did I got a new desktop and use laptop for bobcad.

[fatal-exception]

I have an older Toshiba Centrino laptop that has been running Mach3 for over a year with no problems.

I recently bought an off lease Dell laptop to control machine #2 and had a struggle with getting it to run properly. I changed the computer type to 'Standard PC' and it's also been running Mach3 just fine.

Paul

[Salty72]

In my testing of laptops and CNC I found that the output drive signal from the parrallel port is no large enough to actually drive anything larger than a printer... HOWEVER if you get a opto-isolater (breakout board) and plug this into the parrallel port of the old lappy it boosts the signal to drive CNC gear...
M2CW

[neilw20]

Maybe this is a solution.
Stream serial via USB and let the external hardware queue the parallel data.
Have a look at:
http://www.cncdudez.com/usb-par.html