I am working on a new build. I am trying to get the smooth stepper working with my PC.

I am running the configuration utility. When it gets to the part where it tries pinging the ESS board, there is no communication. It sits there forever waiting for the ESS to respond.

I have run all of the suggested troubleshooting. I have tried turning off the firewall, tried replacing the Ethernet cable. I am using a regulated 1A 5V power supply (scope shows nice clean input). The top lights are doing a double flash about once per second, and the orange network cable light comes on when I plug in the network cable; according to the documentation this is doing what it's supposed to do. I am directly connecting from the PC to the ESS. I am using a Dell E6410 laptop. I tried firing up Mach4 as well, just in case I got one of the first 500 that would not ping. But Mach4 was unable to communicate as well.

I have tried posting on the Warp9 forums but my posts do not show up (it states that someone has to review before the post appears, but as far as I can tell the forums are no longer moderated, as no new users have been added in a long time). There is no contact info for them either. I have had mine sitting in a box for about a year, I see they are still for sale on the CNC4PC site, where I bought it. But is the company defunct? Am I out of luck?

I would really like to get this machine running this week, and this and tuning are my last steps. I spent 6 hours on this problem yesterday.