[sylvester1073]

Low voltage on PP output will give you problems only at high speeds.
Knocking and long delays are produced by the communication protocol (IC or the board chipset that manage PP) and CPU interrupts. You can't do much about that, except switching to real-time DOS.

eSilviu,

Are you saying that 2.6 volts on my PP wont affect my Gecko drives at low speed even if they require 3.3v minimum?

Julian.

[eSilviu]

eSilviu,

Are you saying that 2.6 volts on my PP wont affect my Gecko drives at low speed even if they require 3.3v minimum?

Julian.

you can't distroy them using lower input voltage. If the input schematics contain a resistor and an optocoupler, even 2V should be enough to drive them.
If the voltage is too low, the optocoupler won't transmit "logical 1" further, but always zero.

[sylvester1073]

you can't distroy them using lower input voltage. If the input schematics contain a resistor and an optocoupler, even 2V should be enough to drive them.
If the voltage is too low, the optocoupler won't transmit "logical 1" further, but always zero.

Ahh.... This is very interesting. So now i can ignore my low voltage as a source of my problem this means i better start delving into the bios a bit further for C1E and Speedstepping as discussed earlier in this post. There must be something more that needs to be tweaked that will improve my poor pulse stream. Thanks for your input once again. This computer stuff is a bit of a learning curve for me.

Julian

[sylvester1073]

Hi all,

Reset my Bios, found something called "APM BIOS" which stands for Advanced Power Management. Disabled it and guess what? Yep, problem solved, well 90% anyway. Ran motor for 10 minutes and no locking up! There is still the occasional "Knock", but nothing like before. I'll continue to try and get rid of the occasional knock, but for now i'm really happy and can finally start cutting something. Cheers to you Eldata and eSilviu for your advice. I'm having a beer right now...One for me and one for you both:cheers: I can now spend the money i was going to use for a Smoothstepper on some parts for a laser i want to build to cut balsa and light ply.

Regards Julian.