GearHeads Forum

Hi Art,

I originally bought the PoKeys so I could run Mach4 but had not got as far as taking it out of the bag. When you came along with Auggie that lit my fuse and I've been having some fun with it.

Today I decided to figure out hot to get Mach4 running with it and I got motors spinning and tried the road runner files. I got a few disconnects so thought I would give the spiral file a try. The results were god awful. I tried again an hour later and no better.

I have just gone back to Auggie.... That was a bit of an adventure, I still am unsure of the sequence to get the Pokeys lit. At any rate I hit the magic connotations and am now testing the spiral again. I shall report shortly but it looks like my Mach4 setup is a disaster.... 

Pretty much time to try another computer for a try......

And don't worry about me, I'm just playing and reporting... I'm going to want a laser setup sooner or later so I'm just following along.

I am feeding my network through a 16 port switch. From there I feed some common garden variety multi-port WiFi routers. One line goes out to an old switch in the garage which feeds a WiFi router for my internet connected garage door. Two WiFi routers here in the office, one up in my wife's office, a couple of printers, one an old HP plotter with a parallel the Ethernet dongle. My internet modem goes to an old 8 port switch to get the two IP addresses I am allowed. One goes to an ANCIENT server (its gotta go) that does the DHCP? stuff and firewall and another that was to replace it but never got finished..  yet. It boogles the mind that any of this works at all.

In other words, I have no idea what I am doing.... <Grin> Logs??? These are all consumer grade hubs and switches I don't think they log anything. I thought I was wrong once but I think I was mistaken.

Just downloaded Auggie again and seems like we are still at 020...

Log is now on... thanks Art.

I'm planning on trying it with my laptop and a direct connection. It's on the list.

Joe:

  I have seen things lock up when a com thread bocks on an unresponsive device. All your troubles point to
a general network reset happening occasionally.. Have you checked to see if your router logs shgow anything?

TO get a log now, you have to turn it on, the switch is on the run-time config button.

Art

And lately when I do get disconnected I have to use task manager to shut Augie down..

Fired up Augie V 020 this morning and it got about 2/3 through the spiral and estop. Sometimes it runs forever but every now and then.... but the log... er what?

Log attached and I will look for the latest...

Joe:

Glad its cleaner anyway. System seems clean till it disconnects... Ive seen dropouts, but the disconnects are concerning, mine never seems to do that unless I do a bad code error .. but lets see how it goes over the next while..

thx for the report..

Art

With the 010 version things were looking good running the spiral but it just estopped.

I'm now running two small steppers from my G540 for the tests... 

Log attached..

I'll go look for the latest.... and I ordered a new 24 port hub last night.

Joe:

He'll grumble more if you tell him it will all work fine so long as the network never stalls more than 100ms...



Art

Kirk, thanks for the comments, I appreciate the input. I will keep this all in mind.

Art, I'll make some changes with my USB setup at some point and retry it. I have been playing today and shot both feet off several times, those are usually lessons that stay learned. I have at least now become an X axis motor spinner from the G540.  ;D It's running the spiral as I type.

My son who is an IT guy was over today to fix his wife's car in my shop and stuck his nose into what I was playing with. He just walked away shaking his head and mumbling all the reasons this was a bad idea when I told him we were trying to run a real time device over the network.<Grin> I'm going to have to stop and take a good look at the network setup though, It was never planned but just "happened" since we ran Novell around here.

All in good fun........