Please help, I need some addvise

Hi,

I have been looking through the forum to find answers for my situation.
They all very from my set-up.

I have a 3 axis router with an Anaheim Automation DPF 65003 driver and 34D311S motors.

This machine is at lest 15 years old and I am trying to set it up with a new PC and Linuxcnc 8.04.

This unit employs three parallel ports, one for each axis, I need help confirming port address's and
dealing with “parallel port set up”, the pin layout has me puzzled.

I have very little documentation for the machine, and even less know how! (This should be fun).

Can anyone help????

Thanks, Allen

I'm sorry John, I always manage to leave out imporant info.

It is a DC stepper unit with 3 axis.

I hope this photo helps.

Allen

The driver has three boards in it going to separate break-outs, a LPT cable then marries the PC to the system.

There are three limit pick-ups on each axis.
Deffinatly useing Step and Direction,
Reduced current, and All windings off.
Low and High Limits, and Aux Input.

Not sure what "Phased Steps" are but I'll look into it.

I'll study your links.

Thanks

This as I understand it is the software that used to run this machine.

Maybe it will help sort this out.

These drives them selves only need the step and direction signals. Every thing else is specific to your machine. How many LPT ports were used to connect to the computer? The machines I have worked with that used Anaheim drives had IndexerLPT software as the basic option controller, but all of ours used Microsiystems of Buckhanon's CNC Controler software (eventually became WinCNC) Ours have two LPT ports controlling 4 axis. Our machines use 2 limits per axis, with hi and lo limits for the 1st and 2nd axis on pins 1,14,16,and 17. Step and direction was on pins 2&3 (1st axis) and 6&7 (2nd axis). This is not a standard LPT configuration and the only way to use it with LinuxCNC is to find a parallel port card that is compatible with X-mode.
www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/forum.../14035-parallel-port

also read the section of the manual about the parallel port driver
www.linuxcnc.org/docs/html/hal/parallel_port.html

You are going to have to spend some time figuring out exactly what everything on your machine is connected to, because there is a myriad of ways it could have been done.

Todd,

I was hoping you might share some of your insight.

Like your's, this machine was running under Indexer LPT software.
It has three parallel ports, one for each axis.
This may have been due to the 286 PC that was used to run it. (That PC died).
This machine may go back 20 years, found a date stamped document from 1993.
It's a nice machine, precision ball and lead, linear ball&rails, steel construction.

I'm not sure I want to take on rewiring the entire machine to get Linuxcnc to work, and not knowing anything about running it (Linuxcnc) or HAL, Xmod looks like a high wall to climb with just documentation.

I may have to surrender and go back to Indexer LPT and Windows. Yuk!

Thanks for the help.

Allen

Post a close up picture of the small board that the LPT cable plugs into, so we can see better how the wires are attached.

Using X-mode isn't realy any different from using the parallel port in any other mode, other than you need to make sure your port can do it.

As to figuring out your wiring you are going to need to do this no matter what software you use, (unless you can find an old Pentium mother board with enough ISA slots to stick your 3 old cards in so you run DOS and the old software. (good luck with that)

With X-mode and a little rewiring you should be able to run the whole machine off of just one parallel port, or without any rewiring using 3 ports, and a 3rd option would be to rewire so you can use a standard port pinout. I think for a standard port you will need to use at least 2 ports with a lot of wire movingor 3 ports and only moving the inputs to different pins.

Looking as best I can at your grainy picture. To use 3 parallel ports set to the regular output setting. You should only need to move the wires on pin 1 to 10, 14 to 11, and if used 16 to 12, and 17 to 13. (You might also need to add a pull up for these.)

This is making some big assumptions, that those wires are infact going to the limit switches or some other input.

I also can't tell what the 4 wires connected to each of the driver are, and to what pins on the LPT port those are conected to. I am assuming they are (from front to back on the drive #9-on/off, #7-0vdc, #6-(cw)clock, and #5-(ccw)direction.