Mach2 and parallel port cards - Dave

> Hi Art,
>
> can you elaborate a little ? does this mean you can use 2 (or

more)

> cards to run lots of motors ? or lots of I/O's ? I know there is
> some limit, but 4 motors, 4 outs and 5 ins in kinda limiting.
>
> (address the Game port ?)
>
> I have 4 steppers now and would like to add a 5th. and would like

to

> have a couple more outputs for clamps and flood, spray or drop
> coolants.
>
> Dave

Dave: I am currently running two parallel port cards in my MACH 2
machine. I had to add the second card in order to have enough inputs
for the THC project. The PCI buss cards come with their own driver
that does the Windows Plug'n Pray. Instead of putting the card at
the next available standard port setting (0278h) it gets "smart" and
assigns some weird I/O address then remaps that address to LPT2.
That's just great for things that use an LPT call for printing but
not for programs that address the port directly. Art became aware of
the problem and included the ability in MACH 2 to assign any address
you want to the second port. Two cards give you 10 inputs and over
twice that in outputs. While the PC will handle at least 3 parallel
ports I don't think MACH 2 will do more than 2. There might be an
issue with having to read all of those port pins every few
milliseconds that is a limiting factor. Art can confirm/deny that
allegation.

You have to upgrade to MACH2 and It's somewhat of a culture shock
after you get used to MACH1, but the good news is that unlike every
other software company out there the upgrade is FREE!