Hooking up HobbyCNC board and motors to PC...

[jdbaker]

Hello,

Hopefully this is the correct thread for this, I just recently purchased the HobbyCNC board and motor kit, and last night we tried hooking it up to the computer (via the supplied parallel cable) and running some tests (just with Mach2, seeing if we could get the motors to spin etc..).

I updated the pin/ports in Mach2, but nothing seems to be happening with the board when we're testing it out. We tried hooking the board and motors up to a simple basic stamp program, and that worked great (motor and board are working), but getting it to communicate with my PC isn't working.

Am I missing something here, am I supposed to install some drivers or something to get this to communicate with my computer? It's been a long time since I've played with parallel port stuff, so it's probably something simple I'm forgetting, any and all help would be much appreciated in advance.

[joecnc2006]

motor setup also? go through all the setup windows. i have the board and it works great for me.

[jdbaker]

Joe2000che,

I don't think I understand your reply, what setup windows? Like I said, I'm sure it's something very simple, the board was tested to be working, I am just drawing a blank as I'm trying to get it to communicate with my computer.

[HobbyCNC]

Originally Posted by jdbaker Hello, Hopefully this is the correct thread for this, I just recently purchased the HobbyCNC board and motor kit, and last night we tried hooking it up to the computer (via the supplied parallel cable) and running some tests (just with Mach2, seeing if we could get the motors to spin etc..). I updated the pin/ports in Mach2, but nothing seems to be happening with the board when we're testing it out. We tried hooking the board and motors up to a simple basic stamp program, and that worked great (motor and board are working), but getting it to communicate with my PC isn't working. Am I missing something here, am I supposed to install some drivers or something to get this to communicate with my computer? It's been a long time since I've played with parallel port stuff, so it's probably something simple I'm forgetting, any and all help would be much appreciated in advance.

We have a setup file in our files section on the Yahoo support group.

Dave Rigotti
HobbyCNC.com

[jdbaker]

Thanks Dave. I posted here before while I was waiting for my yahoo membership to clear. I've moved it over to that support medium now. I will try that file tonight.

[jdbaker]

Just in case anyone else has this trouble in the future, we finally got it working last night. Funny enough, all it took was reading the Mach2 manual You can see a copy of it at http://www.artofcnc.ca/Mach2.6.11.pdf. Anyways, we read about testing it, and it mentioned running the OCXDriverTest.exe, so we did that, and once it finished, we ran Mach2 and it started working (it actually startled us because we didn't expect the motors to kick in). Hope this helps someone else avoid the same problem.

Just want to say to Dave, The HobbyCNC board and motors are great, and we can't wait to get these hooked up to a table and rods.

[junior]

do you have a link for OCXDriverTest.exe, thanks.

[CNCadmin]

Originally Posted by hobbycnc We have a setup file in our files section on the Yahoo support group. Dave Rigotti HobbyCNC.com

You could also add them here too- http://www.cnczone.com/modules.php?n...ategory&cid=15