About a month back I installed a second printer board in my computer, the test says it is there and working fine. I installed a second breakout board from CNC in Florida. I then wired my Manual Pulse Generator into the board as per the diagram from CNC. I got nothing!  I moved the MPG “A and B” wires to my first breakout board and it worked perfectly. I checked the RS-232 pins and got nothing!

It appeared that I was not getting the signal through the breakout board so I contacted CNC and he was kind enough to replace it with a new one. After replacing this board with a new one I still got nothing!!! Why is it not working? Oh yeah, I also changed the address for the second printer board to 400 in the “Ports and Pins” settings in Mach3. Although I must admit I don’t fully understand if that is correct or not but it comes from the LPT2 manager. Any computer people out there have any ideas what I missed or how I can test to locate the problem.

Fred

Have a look in device manager at the LPT2 and on the resources tab you want the first 4 numbers or letters that are in the I/O Range. I have circled them in the screenshot of my LPT1. If the first digit is a 0 you dont have to enter this although doing so will not make any difference. If its a Letter or another digit you will need to enter it, eg if its A400 then you need the A.
Hood

That was a good lead and may still be related to my problem, but I changed it to read: Oxd400 and a few other versions with no change. One other thing is on my second port I have two lines, the first one is I/O Range D400-D407 and the second is I/O D800-D807. The box with "Use Automatic is light and not active, but the "No conflicts is clear. Oh, yes, I also tried the d800 and I enter them a "D" but it changes them to "d".

Fred

D400 is the correct one so if it still doesnt work with that then there is another problem. How about posting your xml and maybe we can see something there.
Hood

Another few thoughts, make sure your cable is a straight through one, some can have crossover pins. Also if you have a voltmeter put it between an  output pin and ground. Set that pin up in ports and pins as one of the outputs and activate it and see what the voltage shows.
Hood

I sent you the XML file as an attachment, but I don't see it here yet. I had checked the cable with my meter by going from pin to pin. But I will chck it as you do. Thank you.

You might have to rename the xml as if its been posted previously under that name it wont post. So if you are just using the standard Mach3Mill.xml copy it to your desktop and then rename it to something like ffulmer.xml, it should then attach fine.
Hood

I hope you can get this. Thank you.

Fred

I forgot: the pins are not correct on this XML file. They are really port 2 pin 2 and port 2 pin 3. Sorry for the confusion.

Fred

That last note about the pins only means the file I sent did not have the correct pin numbers ( I had been changing it around so much). I still have the same problem.

If I put my meter on the 2 or 3 pin from the break out board and go to ground as I turn the MPG I should see 5 volts or some action. Is that correct?

Fred