tool table / touch off problem

hello,
I have a lathe that I have been using axis, emc2 (2.4.3) in 10.0.04 on and everything has worked in the past.
Having some problems and wanted to throw it out for possible help/comments.
I noticed problems with using the tool table, such as having to re-do it (change #'s again, like it wouldn't take them after touch off) and reload it several times as well.
That is all semi-workable but lately I can't even get it to do a "touch off" in AXIS.
I keep getting the error "Must be in MDI mode to issue MDI command".
Every once in a random while it will take my touch off, though.

If I try to do a G54 touch off (in manual mode) it will say that.
If I try to do a Tool Table touch off it will give the error twice.
Today I updated to version 2.5 of linuxCNC and it didn't change much.

I have added a few python buttons (T6 tool change buttons, rapid to home button, spindle speed button) but this was a long time ago and it worked with all that stuff last summer.

Any ideas or comments would be greatly appreciated!
thanks

I'm using the touch off button on the manual control tab.

It's getting worse, now I cant even execute an MDI command (definitely in MDI mode) and could yesterday. It absolutely will not reload my tool table no matter what, and would in the past.
Yeah, I did the upgrade and all for 10.04 lucid. Did a restart too.
I am probably going to just start over, with a different computer.
I noticed that the software seems to "hang" or freeze up sometimes when I switch from Manual to MDI mode. Maybe there is some quirk about this motherboard or onboard graphics/etc...who knows.
I thought this computer would be plenty good, my friend runs his (emc2) on a pentium 3. When I get time I will try this other one I have, thanks for reading my posts and responding. Have a nice day.

Hi

Yeah, I did the upgrade and all for 10.04 lucid. Did a restart too.

Have you tried 8.04 on this computer?

I would not even attempt to use 10.04 on a P3, both my workshop computers are P4s and work far better with 8.04, but still run Linuxcnc 2.5
(latency 9,300 base thread compared to over 30,000 with 10.04)

regards

Just to be clear, the computer I was using is a single core Opteron, not a bad machine--just built 2 years ago. Budget processor but newer. It ran AXIS just fine at first but got slower and slower, eventually just wouldn't even switch to or from MDI mode. (The P3 I was referring to was a co-workers router.)

I have switched to 8.04, on a different computer (dual-core AMD). On 10.04 it did badly on the jitter test--ran around 10000 mostly but would just spike up to 45000 sometimes. So I went with 8.04, and AXIS seems to be responding better. Haven't spent alot of time with it yet, so I will try moving forward from there.
Right now my problem is that the AXIS window is too big for my monitor, so it is extremely tedious to work on the machine. I need to figure out how to change the display with a smaller font and window, or something. When I used 10.04 I didn't have this problem. It's similar to the problem I see in Windows when the resolution setting is incorrect (humongous window but half of it is off the screen). I'm sure somewhere in this internet the answer can be found!

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ok after much pain and suffering I did get my screen resolution fixed. Wouldn't let me go above 800x600, this was cutting off the bottom of most of my windows...very important part of a window!