Missing link

[Konstantin]

I have this basic question, because I am missing the picture in the step between the drivers board and the PC.

So how the PC talks to a drivers board? (yes by a parallel port or other I/O) Do TurboCNC supports Xylo or Gecko or ther is another setup to make?

If I am to make a real small project with harddrive steppers and using perhaps ULN2803 will TurboCNC recognise it.
I am totaly lost in this.
I ve seen some web pages describing how to use steppers from HDs and Floppy drives and they have their driver source code with it, but I stil cant see the whole picture.

Please help me to understand.
Konstantin

[snaggletto]

Hey,
TurboCNC doesn't care what it's talking to. As a matter of fact, it will spit out step and direction signals all day, even without anything connected to the parallel port. There is absolutely no feeback to your software. The drive does all the work, the software just tells it where and how fast.

Almost every hobby based stepper motor driver is built around step/direction signals. Just wire the parallel port outputs to the driver inputs (usually via a parallel port 'breakout board') and connect a power supply. Your biggest concern should be the type of steppers you are using and there power requirements, which will determine what driver you use. For example you can't drive a bipolar stepper motor with unipolar driver. Good luck.

[abasir]

Plenty of info here
http://www.luberth.com/plotter/ditwasplotter.htm

TurboCNC will work with your ULN2803 setup using wave-drive.