Stepper Configuration Wizard - Axis Configuration

i am not sure what set the the thread rate at. Not sure this will matter when ptest locks up machine.

Have you tried another parport card?

I seem to remember I had problems with a Sun PCI card with Linux, which worked fine under windows.

Try cleaning the edge connectors with meths or some other refined alcohol and wet a piece of card with the same alcohol
and insert into the slot a few times to clean those connectors.

Also try swapping PCI slots and rebooting if you have more than one slot

What number did you set in the "Base Period Maximum Jitter" field?

If you mean in stepconf, set it for 50,000 - it will ignore anything higher

If you are setting directly in the ini file, try starting with a number 3 x your max jitter.
That should give a safe figure that will not be too fast, but capable of being tuned down later

However I very much doubt it is anything to do with thread rate, there is no way using the port tester should cause a lock up
It sets its own thread for the test, which is 1000000 AFAIR, so same speed as the servo thread in a running config, ie slow

regards

I really appreciate the help and to maximize this effort I am going to do a reload on an Athlon 64 system go from there. I definitely think I am missing something. My only problem is that all my pc's do not have a parallel port onboard. I am using a SYBA parallel port card. Should I use something else?

I really appreciate the help and to maximize this effort I am going to do a reload on an Athlon 64 system go from there.

There is no point re-installing
What is it you have installed - which distro?

Restart your computer with the parport card installed and when up in a terminal do

sudo lspci -vv > lspci.txt

then

dmesg > dmesg.txt

and attach the 2 text files that are produced

Please also attach the .hal and .ini file you have been using in your config

We have no idea what parport address you are passing to stepconf and whether it is correct, just for starters.

regards

I have gotten the motors to turn. I changed where the Parallel port address was set in stepconfig and emc was working but I had set it as a mill and not a lathe. Delete the config for mill and now emc will not pull up without error message. The motors will still move in stepconfig in testing mode.I know I am close to getting this working right. Thanks to all who are trying to help.