On Sat, 2012-02-25 at 17:45 -0500, Thatcher Chamberlin wrote: > Hi, > I've been spending a while getting EMC2 set up on a computer in my > basement. I've had a lot of errors and such, but the community and > wiki have been very helpful. However, my latest problem seems to not > have a solution. EMC2 opens, allows me to home the axes, and start the > G-Code,
I loaded your configuration to my office PC and tried to run it. I got an error about shared memory and found that I needed to remove the nml file line from the .ini file. Then it ran fine. I put HALscope on the parallel port and saw that the signals are being sent, so the signals should be coming out of the parallel port. > but the motors receive no output. You should be able to see, with a voltmeter or other, the parallel port signals changing state while LinuxCNC is running a g-code file. > I've tested this in a number of ways: I've use the parallel port test > utility from the wiki, and also probed the outputs with an LED while > the G-Code was running. On the troubleshooting page, it suggested me > to contact the developers to get help. Here's my setup - the first > two attachments are the parallel port and stepper motor driver, > respectively, and the third attachment is the zip of the configuration > files. > Any help would be greatly appreciated. > Thanks, > Thatcher If your checks above were okay but done with the drivers disconnected, try it again with the drivers connected to make sure the driver inputs are not drawing too much current from the parallel port pins. It is not especially clear what is between the schematic with the parallel port connector and the driver schematic. If they are directly connected, this might not be a good thing. It is easy to burn out the parallel port pins so having a breakout board with isolation would be better. A breakout board with buffers is a good idea too, especially if the parallel port is based on 3 Volts. It looks like you are using the address of the motherboard port, which if you blow out will be nearly impossible to fix, so I recommend using a PCI dual parallel port card, which at around $15 is cheaper than replacing a motherboard, and provides another parallel port to work with. I didn't see any pull up resistors for the Step and Dir signals. If the parallel port can only sink current, you will need pull up resistors on those signals. For testing, you can disconnect the drivers from the parallel port and tie a pull up resistor to each Step and Dir input, and with a switches to ground. Don't ground these signals while connected to the parallel port because you could burn out the pins. Toggling the switches should get the signals to go from 0 to 5 Volts and get something to move. It looks like the enables are tied ON so that should not be a problem, but you might look into conditions that may cause the driver to go into fault mode. At under an Amp maximum, it could be very easy to overload the driver. Measuring the voltage across R1 (Current Sense) can give you an idea of the current draw. Current = Voltage/.75 Ohms (R1) , 750mA(Max.) x .75 Ohms = .56 Volts Max. That's what comes to mind so far. Good Luck. -- Kirk Wallace http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ http://www.wallacecompany.com/E45/index.html California, USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Virtualization & Cloud Management Using Capacity Planning Cloud computing makes use of virtualization - but cloud computing also focuses on allowing computing to be delivered as a service. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51521223/ _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
