PCI Parrallel Port help.

[UKRobotics]

I have purchased two PCI parrallel port cards to run my cnc machine but neither of them are recognaised by my cnc software.

I know the software/cnc hardware & cables arent at fault because I have tried connecting it to the onboard motherboard parrallel port and everything works fine.

But if I hook it up to either of the pci cards nothing works: neither mach3 or the rutex tuning software.

According to device manager everything is installed properly with no conflicts so i'm a bit confused about how to solve this one.

I would welcome any suggestions on how to fix this or a link to a brand of pci printer card that is 100% definatly compatible with mach3 and rutex.

[Eurisko]

If Mach3 doesn't provide an option for additional ports, you might try this:

Your BIOS should allow you to reconfigure the port addresses of the add-on ports.

Set one of the additional ports to the default port address,
0x378 - 0x37F.

Windows Device Manager should also allow you to designate one of the three ports as LPT1.

Just a thought, hope it helps.

[HuFlungDung]

Unless they've made PCI parallel port cards a lot smarter lately, I wouldn't be surprised if you need a seperate, "real" IRQ (less than 15) for each new card, or at least, have them on seperate IRQ's from each other, even if those IRQ's might be shared with some other device that will not be used concurrently.

Freeing up IRQ's: disable the onboard parallel port if you only need two ports. Also, disable any unused COM ports. Remove a LAN card to gain another IRQ.

These comments are based on battles with old WIN98, so they may be outdated with using WINXP.

[UKRobotics]

IRQs for the pci cards are managed my windows not bios.

I think you have a valid point about the 'real' irqs but it may be easier said than done because windows xp makes it almost impossible to get to them.

In the good old days you could choose an IRQ for any device listed in device manager, in XP virtually everything is greyed out and it wont let you touch anything.

[kowell]

Try going to device manager , resources and finding the I/O range

something like this : E300 - E307

then enter this number in Mach3 like this: oxe300

as the port number instead of ox378 etc.

This should enable Mach3 to find the card.

Kym

[UKRobotics]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I have now solved the problem after attempting a number of fixes.

I have changed so many variables now i'm not sure which ones are necessary and which ones werent but here goes.

Firstly I changed my pc type in device manager to a 'standard pc' This is supposed to give windows less control over your your IRQs.

Next I went into my bios and disabled all my onboard ports (serial 1,serial 2, parrallel etc).

After a reboot windows asked me to reinstall a lot of my drivers because of the standard pc change.

A few more reboots later and things were back to normal.

Then I went to device manager and under ports I changed my cards to lpt1 and lpt2.

At this point I coudnt get mach to recognaise anything (at least not with the standard 0x378 address for lpt1

Next I restarted again, went back into bios and went into my pci configuration. Here I had an option to specify fixed IRQ's for PCI locations on the motherboard.

My first parrallel port card was slot 4, the second slot 5. I changed these from AUTO to IRQ 5 & IRQ 7 respectively. Now both my ports have 'real' IRQs.

After saving the changes and going back into windows I still wasnt able to connect to anything in mach3 but I hadnt broken anything in device manager either which was a plus.

Taking another look arround device manager I was not able to find a specific single address for my cards, but there were a lot of hex ranges for input/ouput.

I went through the list typing every number I could find into mach3 and eventually I found the one that worked.

I cant help wondering if I had just got the address right in the first place that I could have missed out on all the other steps, on the other hand those other steps might have also been necessary for it to work. I guess I'll never know unless I re-trace all my steps.


Anyway, LPT1 is now on IRQ 5 and address 0xFF98. I will need to do the same for my LPT2 card.

Another interesting thing I noticed is that connecting inputs through the rutex motherboard, some will work when the board doesnt have 24v power but others (Eg. the A axis limits) will not work unless the board has power.

This is totally unrelated to IRQ and address issues, but If i hadnt have spotted that now it could have caused me a lot of headaches later.