[bkdaaa]

So I built up a new computer with some spare parts I had laying around as I was having issues working with larger file sizes. I replaced the motherboard, video card processor and memory. The installation was on teh same drive and worked perfectly fine before the new computer. Now nothing works at all. I have been going through settings and still cant get anything to work. Mach 3 shows it working but nothing is happening at the controller. My setup is Mach 3, and a G540 through a printer port. Any ideas at htis point would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Doug

[ger21]

What operating system?

What type of problem were you having with large files? Mach3's toolpath display can be very resource intensive, and it's not uncommon to have to turn it off when running large files. I have to turn it off on files over ~200,000 lines of g-code.

[bkdaaa]

I am running WinXP.
I upgraded to a Pentium 5200 dual core processor. I do have the lpt set as EPP 1.9, and am at the same address in windows and Mach3. I also had to invert the EStop pin. Hte display in Mach3 shows the motors moving but there is no activity at the motors. The entire setup was working before I got the bright idea to make it better!

[bkdaaa]

Thanks! How do I turn off the display? I am currently running your screenset, or if I am just running mach 3 mill? As a side note I did read somewhere about some motherboards requiring an external LPT card so I did order one of those form NewEgg for about $15 last night to try. All of this started with trying to get a cheap Playstation controller to work as a control pad, lol! I got it to work on my laptop, but cannot get it to run on my CNC Control computer. Isn't that how most of these projects explode, doggone feature creep! \
I was having a problem with my computer randomly rebboting, which was believed to be either MB filter capacitors or an underpowered PS. A quick trip to Frys Electronics for a PS, then I saw a motherboard on sale that I had a processor and memory lying around for. That lead to a new video card as my old card was not PCI-e it was ISA, and a case as I could not find the wiring diagram for the old HP case I was trying to recycle. And finally a new LPT card! I guess if all else fails I can put the old one back together for my CNC and get my daughter a new monitor and she will have a decent new desktop for her games and stuff.

[bkdaaa]

The file problem was my computer would lock up. I would have to do a hard reboot to recover.

[ger21]

In my screenset, it's the 6th button from the left on the toolbar. In the standard screen, there's a button on the diagnostics page.

Try measuring the direction pin voltage while jogging back and forth. If the voltage isn't changing, then either the driver isn't installed, or the port address is wrong, or possibly the ports and pins are set incorrectly.

[bkdaaa]

yeah I should probably reinstall the drive I did not try that. Only thing still the same is the hard drive. I should also have a dedicated LPT card tomorrow.

[bkdaaa]

Reinstalled the driver and that did not fix it. Now neither computer the new or the old one are working. The first sign was windows would not boot past the splash scene on teh new computer it just kept rebooting. Tried all sorts of things and even put the old one back together, and now I got nothing. Gonna dig an old computer out tomorrow and see what I can do with it.

[keith20mm]

Did you ever get this problem resolved?

What size drive do you have, and, perchance, does its capacity exceed 138GB?

Does the mainboard bios POST show the correct drive capacity, and does the mainboard support LBA (of sufficient number of bits to cover the drive size)?

You may find that some software, such as drive image management packages, use own disk addressing mechanisms that may lead to 'wraparound', causing corruption of your operating system.

For instance, large drives on a Dell D600, using certain software packages, will end up having a corrupted, non (boot to flashing cursor), or partially, bootable (boot to XP splash screen, then self reboot) OS.

The only fix I've found to work is to partition the drive primary partition to less than 138GB, for the WinXP boot partition.

I also found that if Ubuntu were installed on these large drives, that no part of the Linux partition could reside in any portion of the disk beyond the 138GB boundary.

[bkdaaa]

Yes I did get it fixed. I installed Windows 7 on a new hard drive, a seperate parallel port card was required, and a setting buried in Mach 3 fixed it. I dont remember the setting, I should use a lab notebook and write this stuff down. Thanks for all the help!
Doug