I have used the rs232 connection for a while but gave it up for the Ethernet. It was too slow. To get the Ethernet to work it is best to use a connection to a PC that has an Ethernet card dedicated to just the Mill. Therefore, I have two Ethernet cards in that PC. The cable to the mill is of course one of those with the reversed wires (I forget what they are called) so I do not need a hub. That PC is win2000 and I do not use it for anything else but to get my mill on the network.
Once you have this setup it is super to use. I never use any of the storage in my mill, even though I put a HD in it too. You just go to menu and there is a drive selection button. That takes me to the menu on the PC's drive! From that point everything is the same as if you were using storage in the mill.
The settings for the card and the memory needed are high. I added 16Mb of memory to my mill (VM-15) and it will load into memory about a 10MB g-code file.
The tech support at milltronics was very helpful. I will help you too if I can.
My Mill has the gray case with a 486DX2 motherboard. It had a PCI slot that I used for the Ethernet card but I bet if you have an Ethernet port you can get it to work.
There is a package from milltronics parts that you can get too but it is $$$. I never used any of there parts, it is just a plain jane PC running DOS.
Cheers
Dave  |