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1

Parallel Port breakout boards, motherboards, and dedicated accessories / PMDX-131 reactivation ? what am I overlooking?

« on: August 30, 2016, 05:07:52 PM »

When I apply power (48V DC) to J1 the motors lock. I have a Jumper installed from 'E-stop' to ground on J10 (and the motors de-coupled from the mill so they can free-wheel without moving anything) and the appropriate curent limiting resistors in the green terminals above each Gecko.
   When I use the 'Stepper Configuration Wizard' in LinuxCNC to asign the pins 2 through 10 according to the chart on page 16 of the PMDX-131 manual and run the axis test routine, nothing happens and the motors remain locked. Tried unassigning pin 10, no change. Tried moving and then removing the jumper  on JP1, still no change. I am out of ideas so any suggestions would be helpful.

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Parallel Port breakout boards, motherboards, and dedicated accessories / PMDX 131 vs. PMDX 132

« on: August 04, 2016, 01:17:58 PM »

I am trying to resurrect an Induma F1 knee mill that was set up for CNC and run for a number of years on a number of DOS based systems. It was retired to manual service when DOS became too hard to support and I got it as a 'severance package' when the company went under. The final iteration was an attempt to switch to a Linux based system (BDI / EMC2) that was beginning to work when it was stopped for financial reasons. I got all the hardware but none of the documentation or software and my knowledge of Linux was near zero so I continued to use it as a manual machine. I have since become a regular Linux user so I want to have another go at it.
   It has a PMDX131 breakout board and 4 Gecko 201 drivers (not sure why 4. There are only 2 steppers) that move the bed when I connect them to a signal generator. The only remaining question is LinuxCNC setup information. Does anyone have information on the 131 or is it similar enough to the 132 so that a 132 setup will get me running?