Why does Mach stay with parallel port instead of switching to more modern technology? I am sure there is a reason but I can't find it online.
Why does Mach 3 still use parallel port instead of USB?
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If you install it under a 64 bit operating system then the parallel port is no longer an option, you have to use a motion control board.
Some people are very upset over this. They seem to feel they have a right to use an affordable piece of software on the latest operating system and have it support an obsolete piece of hardware.
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Originally posted by adatesman View PostIIRC the USB port isn't able to maintain stable timing, which Mach needs to operate. The parallel port does, hence using either that or an external USB device that does its own timing, like SmoothStepper or KFlop.
Mach bit-bangs the parallel port to generate pulses: it schedules a high priority Windows processes that writes to the raw parallel port. Hopefully, Windows services that interrupt handler often enough that you drive the stepper"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did."
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Pertty much, to use USB you need something smart enough to take g-code (or something similar) and do all the PID loop(if any)/ pulse generation internaly. Takes a little more skill to program a microcontroller to pull that off then it does a PC with infinate gobs of computing power.Play Brutal Nature, Black Moons free to play highly realistic voxel sandbox game.
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You can bit bang the USB port using a USB to serial converter but the hardware timing is only accurate to a few milliseconds at best. That's good enough to run a stepper at a 100 steps per second or less but that would be a very slow CNC machine. It is however plenty good enough to run a telescope drive.Free software for calculating bolt circles and similar: Click Here
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Sometimes people forget to look for clues and use a search engine;
Google + 'leafboy77' = http://leafboy77.com/index.php/en/
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Yes John, tell us which one that is.
I would suggest looking at Ethernet as a better option.
USB is not galvanically isolated and can suffer from noise issues. Case in point the Smoothstepper USB in some cases just would not work reliabilly where the Parallel Port would. The Ethernet version of the same product does not seem to have same issue. It's a noise issue. Spent many weeks in my router install before I binned the Smoothstepper.
Dave
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