Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Re: Controllers

On Thursday 18 March 2004 02:12 pm, Robert Campbell wrote:

> Mike,
>
> To star with, go to the www.geckodrive.com web page and download their
> white paper. It is a good starting point.
>
> Then go to my web page www.campbelldesigns.com and download the information
> on my breakout board.
>
> The answer is that you will need a control box with a power supply and some
> way to breakout the wires from the parallel port. In Mach2 you will assign
> which pins are used for various functions like step and direction signals
> that go to the Gecko drives.
>
> It is fairly simple once you see the big picture. Mach2 on one parallel
> port can support four gecko drives. They are not daisy chain together, but
> receive their step and direction signals from different pins on the
> parallel port.

I am guessing here that one parallel port plus breakout board will support
four drives with step/dir for each because they're using a separate pin for
each of those step/dir signals, out of eight pins available, is that about
right?

I was thinking as to how it might be feasible to stick a decoder chip on the
breakout board and then have it select maybe one of eight outboard functions,
though I guess software support for this would be the real issue, eh?