Hood,
I tried your suggestions.  They all produce the same result (reboot) except with a twist that the special driver gives me also the blue "your system has been shut down to prevent it from blowing up" screen.  It appears Mach3.sys has some code in it causing this and as the source is not available I think I'm finished tinkering with it.  Next I'll try that Linux/EMC2 option to at least rule out a MB problem.

do a clean xp install, I've built, converted 10 this year and in the end it's allways been either a corupted os or a bad dimm modual and 1 bad power supply. emc is good but not very easy to use.

my personal machine has 3 cad programs and 3 cam and tripple boots to linux, win7 32 and 64. i run desk cnc, emc, mach3,outlook,acrobat........

If you have had a bunch of crap on the computer clean the registry....

if you upgrade get win 7 pro or ult, u will love it


much luk,

Thanks for the suggestion, Tram.

I've just looked at the EMC specs and it appears EMC is not going to work on my MB (ASUS P5G41M-LE [http://commercial.asus.com/product/detail/18]) due to onboard video sharing the CPU memory (I think).  Can it be the problem also with Mach3?

On board video can cause problems with the driver, usually its just interferes with the pulsing, I have never heard of it not installing the driver due to onboard graphics.

Hood

Thanks for the comment, Hood.  If timing is the only issue, I think a Quad 2.66GHz system should be sufficient to generate three 25kHz pulse streams.  Your comment made me try that EMC after all and I have to say I was impressed.
 
The standard download version let me run the Ubuntu/EMC2 from the CD without actually installing it.  Not that I knew much what I was looking at, but nothing crashed and when I was running something called "latency test" it was showing some numbers that seemed reasonable.  Plus UMC is apparently not meant to run as a standalone app.  The latency test actually prompts you to "abuse" the system to see impact of, say watching a movie, on it.

Comming back to XP was like being hit with ugly reality again.  Right after the boot up I was prompet to install that Mach3.sys driver again, which surprised me because I run the Mach 3 uninstall utility before shutting down.  That seems to have worked not too well too.  It's been many years since I tried Linux and at that time it couldn't compare with XP, but things have definitely changed by now and I very much like what I saw.

In any case, to get to the topic, looking at parallel port setup in my BIOS, it has 4 mode options: Normal, Bi-directional, EPP and ECP, the last one being the default.  Could this have anything to do with my problem?

You will want EPP but that will not affect the driver loading, so is not your problem. I suspect it is something on your computer that is causing problems and stopping Mach installing correctly. Probably best for you to stick to EMC if you are not wanting to try a fresh install of XP.

Hood

Well, I tried to put Mach 3 on another partition on my PC with the "latest-greatest" version of XP - the same thing happens.  The port driver installation is crashing it.  This Mach 3 thing just doesn't like my PC, and as it is a fairly new and powerfull (1 year Core 2 Quad) I wonder, if I buy another, will it like that?

The funny thing is that Mach3 has run on every computer that I have installed it on but they are all 5-10 year old trash pile rejects that barely meet the minimum specs.
I have also run it on several newer computers with the same results.

It may very well be something specific to the Quad core setup that you are using.

I am no Doctor but I do play one on the Internet and I also recommend a separate non-Internet connected computer for the machine.

If some stray virus or other unknown thing comes in and ruins that 4 hr sculpture that you are making on your router you really didn't save anything at all.

At last count I have given away 6 computers(cleaned out a closing computer store) that run Mach3 to friends just to get some space back in the shop.

Mike

Mike - you say Mach 3 should run on "trash pile rejects"?  Hmmm...  I guess more powerful is not better, then.
The way I look at it I have 3 options (if I want to use Mach 3):
1 - Buy another PC  (but even a trash pile reject with a monitor is going to cost me several hundred $$$ and some realestate); 
2 - Buy the $155 SmoothStepper (probably lower cost and better performance); and
3 - Use TMS320F28335 docking station (a $99 TI kit I bought for another project, http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/tmdsdock28335.html) as the pulsing generator.  That thing can do all that SmoothStepper can, but how do I get position commands from Mach3 over USB or serial port?  (Subject for another topic, or should I just look it up somehere?).  If I do the last I probably won't get my router running this week (month?)

These work well running Mach thru the pport.

http://cgi.ebay.com/DELL-DIMENSION-2400-PENTIUM-4-2-80GHZ-512MB-RAM-40-GB-H-/140474508405?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item20b4eee475

Try a KVM switch if you want to save some realestate.

I had a great reply  all typed out and then my computer locked up and I lost it.
Imagine if this computer was running Mach3 in the middle of a 2hr job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Mike