G100 Bit the Dust. Apparently.

[DonW]

Hi all,

I need some advice...here's my situation.

I turned on my cnc today, and for the first time in a long time, Mach 3 could no longer detect my G100 G-Rex, so I'm completely dead in the water. And I'm now sick to my stomach...

I had a feeling that the thing was going to break my heart, but the thought of being able to use my laptop to control my cnc was my primary consideration, and with no parallel port and only a ethernet or USB connection, I just couldn't help but give it a shot. At first, I had serious issues, and eventually Gecko Drive replaced the unit and all was well, except for the occasional hicup where I had to restart the drive a time or two to get it to connect properly. But this time, it simply isn't even able to be detected. So I'm calling it a wasted $400, and am going to move on. I've made worse decisions I guess.
I'm running four G203V's on my cnc router, two which control one axis with two ballscrews. I'm using Mach3 on my MacBook Pro, with WinXP Pro. I don't have a dedicated compuer for Mach yet, but eventually will have. So anyway, I need to replace the G100 with a breakout board and whatever else is necessary to take the place of the G100 so that I can get back to cutting parts.
Can anyone recommend products that they are very happy with, that will work for my situation? I'm not that concerned with cost, just that the product be reliable and work for my situation, especially the laptop, which will be my computer for all this for awhile.

Glad to see GeckoDrive is no longer selling these things on their website...

Thanks,

Don W.

[ger21]

You might want to look at the Smoothstepper. www.warp9td.com

[protman16]

Hi DonW,

I have a G100 that is not being used and willing to part with. If your interested PM me.

[DonW]

Hi Protman,

That would be like getting on the back of a wild horse, getting thrown, getting back on, getting thrown again, and getting back on again.
Thanks, but I'm going to go another direction, whatever that may be. No more buggy parts for me...unless of course the good folks at Gecko Drive want to replace this one for me. Still....not sure I want to repeat this again.

[DonW]

I suspect that my issue may be that I turned my firewall on at one point, and somehow that is what has interfered with the G100's operation. But since it seems as though this product has been discontinued by the good folks at Gecko Drive, it makes some sense to move forward. I'm going to compare the CMDX-132 to CNC4PC's C23 board and go in that direction anyway. Maybe I'll get the G100 working on some other project down the road.

[Crevice Reamer]

Hi Don.

The $129 C11 has 2 solid state relays and incorporates a spindle speed controller. It will need a separate PSU to drive the C11 itself.

The main feature of the $183 PMDX-132 is the onboard mounting of the Geckodrives, a direct Smooth Stepper connection, and its own built in BOB PSU. It does NOT have the spindle speed control built in, but does have 2 electro mechanical relays.

Other than that, they have about the same features.

CR.

[ger21]

But since it seems as though this product has been discontinued by the good folks at Gecko Drive, it makes some sense to move forward.

Gecko will still sell replacements to current G100 owners, they just won't sell to any new owners.

[wildwestpat]

Hi Don

Understand your problem only too well. Been there and reverted to LPT on a desktop!

You might be lucky and find that your laptop will take a PCMCIA plug in card. These cards are about the size of a playing card and some 3 mm thick So have a look to see if you have one! Here is a link to one such card. However do a search on the CNCForum as others have purchased PCMCIA cards and used them and the one in the link may not be the best.

http://www.cooldrives.com/software-d...pt-pcmcia.html

However I must ask why persist with cutting edge technology if you don't get any thrill out of the electronics side of CNC? There are issues that are unique to laptops due in the main to their conservation of power settings which can lead to unwanted glitches unless you have taken steps to ensure these are all inhibited properly.

May I suggest you ditch the laptop in favour of a low end spec desktop. You should be able to round up one complete with LCD screen for less than the proposed USB adaptor and still have change for an opto isolated breakout board. This would take you main stream on the interface technology front with a time tested solution.

I would strongly advocate a dedicated desktop PC with no other software loaded other than Mach3 and the operating system Microsoft XP. Whilst you will need to connect to the internet to update the Microsoft XP this should be a one off and then the firewall can be turned off permanently along with an anti-virus features, indexing service 0r other Microsoft stuff that is intended to help with normal web protection / use. Use a memory stick or CD to move between the laptop where I assume you will have an active anti-virus software in use and the CNC only desktop connected to your machine.

If you don't like the pain that goes with buying the latest technology wait until the USB adaptors have built up a large base of satisfied users. Sorry this means either going for one of the high end and very expensive ethernet controllers or reverting to the parallel port connection. My views will draw a lot of comment from USB users and it will be interesting to see if they can offer you a better route to reliable CNC control of your hardware.

Hope this helps although it may not be what you want to hear.

Regards

Pat

[DonW]

Actually, my MacBook Pro seems to be more than up for the challenge of running my router and Mach. Most of the time when I'm cutting something, I have my BOBCad software running also, and IM, and have a web browser open too. Never have a hitch. But it's a pretty darn good laptop. On the other hand, my IT guy at work found an older computer that I can have. It's a P4, 2.4 or something around there. It will have maxed out ram, and a parallel port, and a clean hard drive with XP Pro.

At some point in the future, I might consider adding a SmoothStepper to the mix. We shall see. But I'm a pretty light-duty user. Most of my work is run pretty slow using .023" diameter bits, cutting pearl and ebony and rosewood etc., or fairly simple stuff.

Gerry, I think the folks at Gecko are terrific, and if something were actually wrong with this unit, I have no douts that they would fix it or replace it. But buying another new one...when the product can't do all that I will want it to do in the future seems counter productive. I think the G100 was a great idea that just never reached it's potential, for whatever reasons I'm sure I don't have a clue.

Don

[wildwestpat]

Hi Don

I was not implying that your laptop did not have sufficient grunt (MIPS for the IT techies) just that the action required by Mach should have priority over all other things. Running other software at the same time is inviting a priority contention and could result in some malfunction. Sod's Law will cause the contention issue to surface when machining the final stages on some important task. I am pointing this out as I have been there and used to do it. In my case it was just using the PC to stream som instruction video of the net.

Have fun and stay lucky with the software priorities.

Regards

Pat