Ah, a "smart" USB-parallel controller made for CNC, not just a "dumb" usb-parallel adapter for printers.
Using the latter would limit CNC usable stepping speed to beats rather than tones. For a laptop, CardBus or ExpressCard parallel adapters may still work with similar performance as an old printer port on a PC motherboard. But not all, ExpressCard also has a USB mode, printerport cards that use this would have no different performance than dumb usb-parallel adapters.
What a Nightmare!
johannes
#41
axoman
#42
Thanks for the link, Dragon, I thought you were talking about some special cable or something, I didn't realise it was something that pricey. Looks tidy and sounds neat, but well out of my range!
BTW, this is the one I purchased, you get an Arduino with GRBL firmware preloaded, a CNC shield, and even the full set of stepper motor drivers with heat-sincs - All for £15.
I've not actually tried it yet, so I'm hesitant to say anything about it for now, other than it's looking good cause I believe both the hardware and the software are open source. I don't know if it does that feedback thing, but if you check the specs at the link, it sounds quite capable and they're always adding stuff to the firmware.
Anyway, if it turns out to be crap, I'll just blame Gav' even though I'd bought it before he mentioned it to me. Sometimes it's just handy and fun to have someone to blame other than myself 
Seems pretty cool, although I doubt it does that fancy tones thing Johannes mentions, it's probably just beats, but as long as it works, that's cool. I intend to CNC some prototype designs for completed products, and if I can create a nice repeatable, stable system that would work in a realistic time-frame, I might even be able to use it for small production runs. It's CNC after all, it's designed to be accurate and repeatable - so we'll see.
axoman
#44
Mine only come with one of those blue Parallel-based boxes and some software. I've always hated the fact that it came with Parallel instead of USB, but I bought mine back when they were just starting to become popular on ebay and were almost twice the price they are now.
But at least with the Arduino/GRBL shield I'll finally have a USB-based CNC (I hope so anyway).
axoman
#45
Well ... I've been trying to bring the XP box's Hard Disk back to life for the last four days, but it's had it. It failed not long after I got chance to finally play with the Axoloti again, damn thing. I've got an identical spare hard disk but at this point I'm completely tired of keeping the damn thing running and getting it to run stuff.
It's lucky I got that shield really, cause it looks like I'm gonna need it.
Currently looking into under-clocking my Windows 7 machine cause I read it can save energy, which makes perfect sense really. Not sure how much difference it will make on my system but I intend to give that a go, and if it works, be done with the XP box.
axoman
#46
Does anyone here know anything about SATA, IDE, and their related BIOS settings?
I've been trying to get an internal SATA Blu-ray drive to work on the XP machine. I don't expect to be able to play Blu-ray on the XP machine, I'm just trying to get the drive to work on it.
First I purchased one of these:
Did not work, so then I purchased one of these:
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bi-Directional-IDE-to-SATA-Converter-Hard-Drive-Adapter-Dynamode-/172555816701
And it still didn't work!
I thought the second one was guaranteed to work as it doesn't require drivers and is bi-directional, but no, still won't work. The BIOS doesn't seem to detect the drive when using either of these products, so I'm wondering if it's some setting I have to change in the BIOS.
So, any help appreciated, and bear in mind the motherboard I'm connecting the drive to is in an old Windows XP box, so it uses an older type of BIOS (American Megatrends).
axoman
#47
Just a last attempt to get some info on this before I put the lid back on and forget about it - had enough.
Anyone any ideas why it won't recognise any of these adapters?
strum
#48
Couple of suggestions or thoughts.
There might be better places to ask for this sort of help, it's not really Axo related.
Have you tried updating the bios?
How old is the machine? it's USB controller might not work with a newer standard device.
Have you tried getting a PCI or PCIe card with a PATA adaptor?
Any help to you?
axoman
#49
I can't see a PCI or PCIe card working cause it won't even detect drives indirectly connected to the IDE sockets, so I doubt it will look for drives attached through PCI or PCIe. I suppose that's my last option but I'm sick of buying cards for this damn thing, so I was hoping it was just a BIOS setting I had wrong.
strum
#50
Are you sure the drive itself works?
Have you tested it on another machine with a known working IDE drive controller?
That's what I would do.
axoman
#51
Yup, all drives are working perfectly in the machines they belong in, and there's nothing wrong with the IDE connectors on the board otherwise the drives that belong it wouldn't work.
I'm convinced this is a BIOS setting issue, and have looked at the documentation and even other forums, but still have no idea what I've got set wrong. Anyway, weekend has arrived again, the lid goes back on and it gets forgotten about if I can't fix it by the weeks end. That would be it, end of XP box. The amount of time and effort I've spent trying to get this thing working is completely insane.