Yet Another Charge Pump Question...
20 Mar 2016 06:32 #71937
by Quasirobo
Yet Another Charge Pump Question... was created by Quasirobo
Hello! First post here, just got my Taig Mill with Gecko G540 and Assorted Tidbits up and running (finally), LinuxCNC has been great. My first forage into Linux, as well as my first CNC machine. Learning curves, wow! I breathe easier tonight though; all axes are homed to their respective switches (only one crash in the process), my sooper-spindle turns on and changes speed, the coolant relay goes "click"...
Something that still evades me though is the watchdog or "charge pump" functionality of the G540. I set the serial-port pin 16 as Charge Pump in StepConfig, but no dice. The machine only runs with the charge pump switch off. I searched many previous posts for clarification, I came across old stuff about writing a thread to generate the pulse and defining which pin got the signal manually in the HAL file, but no mentions of that kind of thing more recently, so I figures it's probably meant to "just work" in version 2.7.4. Please notify me to the contrary, should I be mistaken. Also, I don't know about this whole serial-port ECP/EPP thing (sounds suspicious), I'm using an old Dell rig with a new serial port card, and I can't find a thing in the BIOS about that. Suggestions welcome!
Something that still evades me though is the watchdog or "charge pump" functionality of the G540. I set the serial-port pin 16 as Charge Pump in StepConfig, but no dice. The machine only runs with the charge pump switch off. I searched many previous posts for clarification, I came across old stuff about writing a thread to generate the pulse and defining which pin got the signal manually in the HAL file, but no mentions of that kind of thing more recently, so I figures it's probably meant to "just work" in version 2.7.4. Please notify me to the contrary, should I be mistaken. Also, I don't know about this whole serial-port ECP/EPP thing (sounds suspicious), I'm using an old Dell rig with a new serial port card, and I can't find a thing in the BIOS about that. Suggestions welcome!
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
29 Mar 2016 12:28 #72316
by andypugh
Replied by andypugh on topic Yet Another Charge Pump Question...
The problem some people had was that the parport pins did not supply enough current to drive the G540 watchdog.
Some parports apparently supply more current in EPP mode.
As a first test, check the output pin with Halscope to see if LinuxCNC is trying to send pulses. Then (if you can) check the physical pins with a real 'Scope.
Some parports apparently supply more current in EPP mode.
As a first test, check the output pin with Halscope to see if LinuxCNC is trying to send pulses. Then (if you can) check the physical pins with a real 'Scope.
Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.
Time to create page: 0.183 seconds