New to LinuxCNC - Trying to add a PPort card and get LinuxCNC to start

the BLUE board is a NEGATIV board the greens are positiv as a BASE output
so i think your wirering is wrong

what is your Microstep on the Drivers
if you power the drivers do the steppers hold Torque

Tommy - When you say Step - / + is that my PUL or ENA -/+ ?

BBSR -

X - 25 microstep & 5000 pulse
Y - 25 microstep & 5000 pulse
Z - 4 microstep & 800 pulse

Current -
X - 2.5a peak
Y - 4.0a peak
Z - 4.0a peak

Yes the steppers hold the gantry from moving so they are getting some signals.

Personally I would ditch the usb power and fit a 5V power supply as well

Right, so I rewired as suggested by Tommy and we are getting somewhere. I had to remove all of the jumper cables and took both the Y and Z steppers out of action by removing their wiring from the BOB as well.

As it stands all we have connected is the

Step + to P2
Dir + to P3
Step - to GND
Dir - to GND

Now when I go into axis we are getting movement from the X axis but only in one direction.

The documentation that came with the machine setup recommended the opposite, Step/Dir- to P2 & P3

Well, we've gone from amazing to crap in a split second lol. We were almost there I think!

When I connected the X cable into the Y I only had a single direction on the Y as well so I assumed that maybe I had a bad wire and would pick this up when I rewired it all. I've rewired it all up and now nothing from any of the axis when I try. They are wired up exactly as we did the X and only had one direction. Could I have somehow fried the BOB or drivers? Im positive that everything was unplugged when I carried out the work.

The wires going into the GND are all run into connector blocks and then into the board with a single wire so I'm not trying to get 6 wires into the small block on the board. I've checked continuity between the Step/Dir- and the GND pin on the board, not just the screw terminal and that's all good. The lights on the BOB are on and the Driver lights are on and Green.

Oh, by the way, I've just been through the info I had come with the machine and they advised to set the drivers to 25 and 5000. What would be the reason for that? I'll need to change that info in my .ini file as well now wont I? Thanks for all of the help so far, I would have been stuffed without it!

Life's little challenges hey lol. The Mrs said that at least I will know the machine, electronics and software inside and out once its up and running, every cloud and that lol.

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm just about to leave the workshop but will double check everything tomorrow.

I did run a quick test using the Multimeter and jogged the machine in Axis. There was a voltage change when we changed direction however I only checked the Dir not the Step so I will check that tomorrow. If we are getting voltage change does that mean that the board or drivers are ok? Im confused because I didn't do anything with the Z axis and that isn't working either, makes me think its possibly the board. Im hoping its a £15 fix and not a £120 fix! Out of interest, what do you use instead of a BOB?

Also i would take out the wires from the BOB and plug them into parallel port directly to check if the drives are ok. For one axis only to be sure it works

Which pins in the cable should I be checking with that?

BTW, did you set the printer port to EPP in BIOS ? It usually works either way, but again to be sure.

99% sure I checked that it was both EPP and the other one however again, I will double check in the morning.