even the 'legacy CNC88' manuals explicitly state that macro statements are available for use when in DNC mode.. the manual says so in the Communications section when it talks about DNC, and it also says so in the Macro section.

there are some rules about DNC that I have never followed
- 'comments are not allowed', my g-code has lots of comments which use the * symbol
- no O numbers, my post spits out O numbers
- no M30 at the end of the program, my post puts that out too.
- line numbers are optional, my post spits out line numbers (not always consecutively)

could it be my code isn't DNC format correct?

speaking of formats, I run my code in format 2, maybe macros only work via DNC in format 1 (seems unlikely)?

I am wondering if the control ignoring the macro commands when in DNC mode is some kind of setting, has to do with the baud rate?, might be NCFadal doing something weird / adding data that I don't know about? are the line numbers messing it up? as in - maybe if it sees the line number first, it doesnt count the # as the first character?

I did try deleting a line number earlier and the machine stopped where it was and just said 'ERROR' with no further information.

it's pretty baffling that the damn macro statements don't work over DNC