[Michael82]

Ok guys yesterday when I powered off the machine everything was fine , I try to turn it on today and nothing works as far as the machine not moving the spindle will come on but that is it , I pulled up the diag. tab in mach3 to see what was going on and found that the parallel port pin lights were not lit I usually have about 4 or 5 green lights on and now there is nothing . I powered the machiine off and back on and did the same for the computer still nothing when I close out mach3 I got a msg that said attempt recovery with some numbers behinid it 9999-01 it had a yes box and a no box so I clicked the yes box and nothing happen I did the same and clicked the no box and it did nothing . I even uninstalled mach3 and reinstalled it and that did not help I just recently added limit/ home switches but i dont think that has anything to do with this
HELP PLEASE

[Michael82]

I forgot to say the machine is a 3040-t cnc router from ebayAttachment 394738 I am using a hp computer with windows xp 32 bit

[john-100]

are you using the onboard parallel printer port ?
Or are you using a USB or Ethernet motion controller (slow stepper for example)

over the years I have had Windows overwrite important system files a few times
when either I have been impatient and switched the power off too quickly
or during thunder storms when the power dipped long enough for the PC to crash

I have read that Mach can also become corrupted
some times its just the MXL file that needs replacing
other times Mach needs re installing

John

[Michael82]

yes i am using the onboard parallel port , and we also had a very bad storm that knocked the power out but the machine was not powered up or on neither was the computer , what files should I check to see if it was overwrote ? should I uninstall and reinstall mach3 again ?

[john-100]

from a photo in the first advert for a 3040-t cnc router I looked at
it looked like the PC was connected via a USB cable

( some breakout boards sold on ebay need the USB cable to provide the 5V supply for the PC side of the board ! )

its hard to tell what could be damaged by a thunder storm
not knowing exactly what the error message was
I can only guess it could of been scan disk trying to fix disk errors

if windows is working then I would first reinstall MACH 3
( from Newfangled Solutions not a Chinese installation disk)

I would not know what random Mach3 files could be changed


In my case over a period of 4 or 5 years ,

I have had 2 working PC's damaged during storms each time they failed slowly over about a week
on both occasions I suspect the mother boards IDE controller was damaged

I had no advanced warning, the lights flickered and the PC's rebooted and restarted normally
but over a few days I started to get windows error messages ---- can't find XXX

I had to copy several files back from the installation disk only to have the fault return

replacing the C drive with the previous "C drive" I had saved
worked for a few days then the error messages started again
an identical mother board fixed the problem until the next storm !!

note - with modern PC's with an ATX power supply they never are completely switched off
unless you switch off at the socket (or unplug ) unlike the earlier AT PC's that had a real on - off switch


ATX power supplies are in fact 2 power supplies in 1 box

a 5V at 2A standby power supply that's on all of the time the mains supply is available
and the main supply that supplies +3.3V , +5V , +12V , & -12V at several hundred watts to power the PC when its operating

the standby 5V keeps enough of the mother board powered to respond to the " power" button , an in coming call to a modem or
to wake up when the mouse is moved or a key pressed

in response the mother board enables the main power supplies outputs to allow the PC to operate
( the main power supply is always powered - just the various DC outputs are disabled when you think you switch it off !!)

( the mother board grounds the green power "on" wire to the common black wires to switch on the ATX power supply )
https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws...ch-supply.html

John

[Michael82]

I do now what bob you are talking about but this machines does not have that one , I started to think back and the machine( pc) was on when the power went out from the storm , So when I get home today i am gonna try to reinstall mach3 and yes the demo version from artsoft and see if maybe I can just take pics of my settings like motor tuning and input settings etc so I can input the info on the reinstalled version, I have mastercam x4 on the same pc and it seems to work just fine it also uses cimco edit as a communication program and it works so I think maybe by reinstalling mach3 it will help . so did you just get a new pc to fix your problem

[john-100]

lucky ,
I just replaced the mother board with an identical board , the microprocessor , ram and hard drive still worked !

this is the type of BOB I was made reference to

Attachment 394750

and the photo of the 3040 t

Attachment 394752

John

PS
its a long shot but check in the motherboard bios
the printer port is still at 378 hex and set to EPP

[Michael82]

lucky ,
I just replaced the mother board with an identical board , the microprocessor , ram and hard drive still worked !

this is the type of BOB I was made reference to

Attachment 394750

and the photo of the 3040 t

Attachment 394752

John

PS
its a long shot but check in the motherboard bios
the printer port is still at 378 hex and set to EPP

Hey john well I went home yesterday and tried checking the bios and it was off the epp was set to ept after I changed that it still didnt work so I did some digging and before the storm I was playing around in the mach3 folder on the c drive I clicked on a folder that said custom driver I found a file that said original driver and I clicked on it and it fixed it so I screwed up by clicking on a file I had no reason clicking on so I got it back working again yay!!!!!!

[john-100]

some times computers just enable you to make mistakes faster
especially if you have not taken regular breaks

I guess the accidental change only took effect yesterday when the PC booted up again

great to see you have it working again

John

[Michael82]

yeah after the computer booted the change took place but now all is fine , I did have a problem with Mach3 yesterday I was running the machine and I needed to change my program so I minimized the screen and opened mastercam made the changes and reposted my gcode then puled up mach3 and my dro's were at 212 in x and 125 in y or some crazy number like that I was on the mach3 forum this morning and tweakie said that is y they say to only use 1 pc for mach 3 and nothing else . Do you use Mach3 ? have you used Mach4 I ask because I wonder if both programs have that same issue

[john-100]

I am not up to date with all of the issues with the various versions of Mach 3 and have not tried Mach 4
I installed Mach 3 on a 2nd hand Dell optiplex 755 that came with XP installed and never connects to the web

I have another "spare" Dell optiplex 755 with windows 10 installed on a spare hard drive ( making It easy to go back to XP ! )
that I used in an emergency to connect to the web when the previous web connected PC failed

The PC I am now using to post here is based on an Asus H110M-R mother board
it does not have the usual 25 way parallel port connector but it has a 26 pin header to connect an adaptor cable

Attachment 394886

John