When is Mach 4 coming out?

[307startup]

Well, I have a few questions regarding Mach 3 and the future version, Mach 4. When/will Art make Mach 3 or 4 capable of controlling through USB ver 2.0 instead of the printer port? This seems like such capable and widely-used software that Art would be front & center on upgrading it to be most useful and "friendly" to his customers (printer port or parallel port technology is dead...just like vinyl and 8-tracks). Something like a LinkMotion "print job" to USB would be amazing for those of us looking to make a blisteringly fast machine. No more 45 mhz limits on sending/receiving information. I am NOT a LinkMotion fan, it just seems like a really neat solution, a software driver versus hardware. My other question is why not a DOS version or something less likely to have MS "hijacking" the PC we're using to control our machine. I'm sure Bill Gates is a really nice person and all, but his software is only good for MS spying, needing fixing, having hackers zombify your rig & the average lay-person who is not very computer savvy...truly point & click...so long as you don't mind "bugs" and "errors"...not really what I want when I'm machining an expensive piece of material...

[ger21]

First of all, there won't be a Mach4. The next version will be called Quantum. There is a Quantum test available for download, but it's basically just Mach3 with 1 added feature - S-curve accel and decel.


USB. Mach3 can currently run a USB ncPod (www.oemtech.com). In a few months, you should see a USB device called a Smoothstepper.

There has been a lot of talk on the Yahoo group recently about external devices. Art has said that there are limitations with pretty much any external device, but other than speed and IO, the parallel port doesn't suffer from the same limitations as external devices. Basically, the parallel port just plain works better. Especially since Mach3 has been sped up to 100Khz through the parallel port.

You won't see any version of Mach3 on any OS other than Windows. It's taken Art 4 years of 16 hour days (or longer) to get Mach3 to where it is today. And you'd want him to start over from scratch? He also has to support 10,000 registered users. There aren't enough hours in the day.

If you do a clean install of XP, install Mach3, and hook up your machine, you should never have to worry about "fixing it", or being spied on. It's a machine control, if your that worried, it shouldn't even have an internet connection. The DOS box you'd like wouldn't have one. XP Pro is a rock solid OS. And keep in mind that the average lay person that is not computer savvy makes up a large portion of the Mach user community. Switch it to a different OS, and the support would take 110% of Art's time.

[307startup]

Ok...showing my electronics ignorance...what's the difference between the ncPod and the Grex G101? Besides the SSD memory card? And I wasn't knocking Art's effort with the software. Top notch from all I've seen. I'm not particularly paranoid, but even "clean" installs of 98, 2000 or XP can have some interesting side-effects. Just hoping to be able to design a dead-nuts reliable system for myself, and then maybe a few more for others who have no desire to do the DIY wiring, soldering, parts purchasing...yada,yada,yada. You know, a kit basically.

[Switcher]

You know, a lot of high-end ($250,000) cnc tool grinders are working with "Win XP", they are not the Mach3 control, but still they are windows based.

Windows XP is solid, like ger21 said, If your not connected (internet) to the outside world, you can't be hacked, sure you could still bring a virus on a cd etc... but thats the machine op. fault, not windows.



.

[ger21]

Ok...showing my electronics ignorance...what's the difference between the ncPod and the Grex G101? Besides the SSD memory card?

The Grex is more powerful, faster, and has more IO. However, due to the way they work with Mach3, Art has said that the ncPod can actually run 3D moves comprised of short segments at a faster rate than the G100 can. But the G100 can send 4,000,000 steps per second, and the ncPod only 75,000.

Your best bet would be to spend a LOT of time reading as many posts as you can about the two on the Mach3 Yahoo group. There's a lot of info buried there, but I don't know of any one place that spells out all the little details involved.