On 9 January 2014 04:17, Andy <a...@evanspt.com> wrote: >> What are you using to generate the step pulses? > Andy, pardon my ignorance, what /would/ be generating the pulses?
Either software (through the parallel port or other GPIO) or a hardware-based step generator such as a Pico, Mesa, Pluto, Motenc.... card. > The PC is a Gigabyte E350N mini_ITX feeding a break-out board. That sounds like a parallel-port and software step generation setup then. There is no risk there of hitting the 200kHz limit, you will be doing well to get 20kHz. it would be interesting to know what step rates you are seeing, there may be extra performance to be had with external step generation. > The machine seems to be working when I use 10ns for step and 5ns for > direction. Do you mean microseconds or nanoseconds? It is possible that the system will work with nanoseconds specified, but only because the parallel port can't do nanosecond pulses and will end up outputting the shortest pulses it can manage. If you are lucky those will be long enough. > I am just not completely comfortable without knowing those > values are optimum. The values need to be long enough to trigger the drives, and that is all. It's a digital thing, there is no "optimum" just "long enough" You only need to worry about reducing the values if you are trying for very high step rates. -- atp If you can't fix it, you don't own it. http://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CenturyLink Cloud: The Leader in Enterprise Cloud Services. Learn Why More Businesses Are Choosing CenturyLink Cloud For Critical Workloads, Development Environments & Everything In Between. Get a Quote or Start a Free Trial Today. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=119420431&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
