Where do I go from here...

[DustToDust]

I joined the site back in April, intending to buy a kit. However, recently, a built machine has fallen into my lap. It's a Neuractor CNC-4. These machines were circa 1994-1996 timeframe. They are 3-axis, using some light-duty Step-Syn stepper motors.

The machines were designed to be run with DANCAD/DANCAM.

I have the complete assembly and operation manuals, and I know that it worked as of a few months ago. However, I'm having trouble getting it to operate with DANCAM 3.7 on a Windows XP box via the parallel port. There is some communication happening, but the software keeps complaining about a high value on pin 10, which is the ground for all the limit switches.

Dan Hudgins, the author, wants you to run it on a dedicate DOS box. I don't even have a floppy drive anymore, so that's easier said than done.

So before I tear into this machine that I'm pretty certain was assembled correctly, what else can I do to diagnose? Is there any parallel port specific test suites that would let me see if the communications are happening properly?

[TOTALLYRC]

You should be able to boot into DOS from cdrom and at least try it that way.
Mike

[DustToDust]

Originally Posted by TOTALLYRC You should be able to boot into DOS from cdrom and at least try it that way. Mike

I've killed about 3 CD-R's now trying to create a bootable DOS CD. The machine will boot from a USB drive, but for some reason I can't get a bootable DOS image on the USB drive either. I really don't want to pay $50 for an IDE floppy drive just to boot DOS!

I did get the machine to boot using a FreeDOS CD, but then that image is locked and I can't put DANCAD on it without trying to modify the image itself and reburning it. (I also followed FreeDOS' instructions to create a bootable USB drive to no avail).

Ironically, I do this ALL the time with other OS's, I just can't seem to get it working with DOS.

I've got an old PC here with a blown motherboard, but the cheapest board I can find it $60 due to it's age. For $100 I can buy a working refurbed machine. Argh.

[ger21]

You can't run a DOS control program that uses the parallel port in XP. You can in Windows98, though, but not as good as plain DOS.

Can't you put DANCAD on it's own CD?

Why not just try running it with Mach3?

[TOTALLYRC]

When booting from a usb drive in dos you will probably need to have a dos usb driver since Dos does not normally support usb.

If you are near ct I have a bunch of used computers cheap.

When you boot to the free dos disc it probably won't see the winxp hard drive because it is most likely ntfs formated which dos doesn't understand.

If you have a spare hard drive you can use that and put a copy of dos on it and make it bootable.

Of course if anyone has a win95/98/me computer it can be booted to dos and should work for testing purposes.

Mike

[DustToDust]

Thanks for the feedback guys! I picked up a new motherboard and chip today for the old machine and got it running tonight. Ironically, my MSDOS 6 floppies won't boot the machine.

So I booted it with FreeDOS, and partitioned the drive into 2 partitions, one for DOS, the other for Linux.

In an ideal world, I would like to be able to run Mach3 as my CAM system, but will that require rewiring the unit? I'm comfortable with soldering and electrical work, but I hate to start "modding" something that isn't working in the first place.

[ger21]

If it uses the parallel port, it may not require rewiring, as you can change the pin assignments in Mach3.

[Hammering Man]

Hi all,
I too have one of the old Neuractor CNC xyz systems. I actually had it working years ago but now I want to run it with Mach 3. When I turn it on, the motors lock as they should but that is as far as it goes. I can't get any motion out of the motors. Is it possible that a re-assignment of the pins to the printer port can fix this?