Does anyone know where to buy a PCI Parallel Card that is going to work with mach 3.

I puchased one from Pcworld, but im having no luck with it unless im doing something wrong.

I have mach 3 looking on LPT1 ( 0x378 ) but in device manager the parallel port settings are:

PCI ECP Parallel Port (LPT1)
I/o Range BF00-BF07
I/o Range BE00-BE07
Memory Range FDBFF000-FDBFFFFF
Memory Range FDBFE000-FDBFEFFF

The change settings option is disabled for some reason.

When i purchased this card i think the manual said it shoud automacticlly change from ECP to EPP as it needs to. There is no option for changing it manually.

Thanks.

Change the address in Mach to BF00 for port 1

Hood

Thanks Hood

Well what can i say, it worked. Only been trying to get it going for a fortnight.

Im so happy this card works now, i can now use a decent PC to run the CNC.

Anthony.

Hi Anthony,

Glad it's working for you.

Possibly you could give the name and model number of the card and possibly a link to it for others to use?

Thanks,
Dave

Hi Dave

I will as soon as i know its working 100%, all i did was click the spindle button (Relay clicks over) to see if Mach was talking to the card and it was, i have yet to try this card with the motors.

I/o Range BF00-BF07
I/o Range BE00-BE07

I noticed the commonality between the various PCMCIA to Parallel cards it that the first number of the top line in the I/O range is the port to enter into Mach3.
Here is what I had to do to get smooth operation:
* XP sp2 HP Pavillion 1.7 ghz dual core laptop.
* 3040 typical ebay brand CNC router / engraver.
* Card is ebay cheap brand "Best Connectivity" purple label.
* Mach3 Port & Pins  > Kernel speed = 100khz.
* Mach3 General Config > Input signal debounce set to 1 or more.

Before my motion was very loud, slow, and jittery.  Every once in a few boots the motion would be good.  None of the motor tuning settings helped.  Disabling all non essential services did not helped.  Change powercfg settings did not help.  After 2 days of fiddling around I pushed the kernel speed to 100khz.  CNC moved smooth 50% of the time.  Then I adjusted input signal debounce.  Worked perfect after that.