Re: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Mach3 & laptops

Ha actually I do have a old machine... which I snagged off the curb at
heavy trash day. For this reason. BIOS shows a 4GB hard drive and
pretty old AMD processor. I would have liked to avoid trying to get it
working and all but it is an option. Might be a good idea to keep the
laptop out of the garage anyways. Does it run ok on old-ass systems?
I'd probably put a fresh install of XP on it, a wireless networking
card, and nothing else to clutter it.

Well on the USB-to-serial cables, those use a virtual port driver that
makes a new COM port show up. Any program can use it just like any
other COM port they don't know the difference. I assume a
USB-to-parallel cable would work the same way but I certainly wouldn't
be surprised if Mach3 had a problem working through the virtual port
driver and physically being bridged through different hardware.

On the other hand, I can say this- my laptop had mega problems running
through the built-in serial port at high speeds. Started dropping
characters, probably just overran some lousy slow part of the
southbridge design. Well, when I switched to the USB-to-serial and ran
the serial data through that, all those problems went away. So, it's
sort of "plausible" that a USB-to-"X" cable could perform better if the
motherboard had problems. I'm skeptical though. Andy Wander says "no
way" so it may be a waste of time to try.

Danny

David Speck wrote:

>
> Danny,
>
> The problem is not with accessing the parallel port, but with the
> internal timing of the Mach3 program.
>
> Mach3 uses a special kernel mode software driver which is necessary to
> provide high precision timing required to get all the various step
> pulses out the door at the precise instant needed for a proper cut.
> Laptops have all sorts of integral proprietary hardware with special
> drivers that confuse the dickens out of Mach3.
>
> When you get down to it, it's pretty amazing that Mach3 works as well as
> it does, considering that even on a desktop, Windows is a highly
> non-deterministic operating system. It takes a lot of high power
> programming on Mach3's behalf to make sure Windows does not decide that
> NOW is the time it has to do a defrag, just as you are half way through
> the 4167th line of your G-code program. Laptops just add a whole
> 'nother layer of complexity to the issue.
>
> Since Mach3 will run just fine on an old Pentium 3 that you can snag for
> free at curbside on trash day, it's just not worth the developers'
> effort that would be required to make it compatible with laptops,
> particularly when nearly every laptop is a collection of custom parts.
> (Have you ever tried to buy a replacement keyboard or LCD for a laptop?
> -- essentially every model is unique, and the corresponding internal
> software drivers are similarly unique).
>
> I'm pretty sure that Mach3 directly writes to the parallel port I/O
> pins, and will not work on a USB to Parallel adapter, at least not in
> the versions that I was familiar with.
>
> HTH,
>
> Dave
>