Can't reverse after homing on 5-axis parallel breakout

I am having a strange issue I have been running a CNC router with a dual motor axis for a while very happily and have just put in a second limit switch on the dual axis so it unracks itself on home in case it gets out of square, and have a really odd issue.Before I home the machine all the non-dual axes work fine (though it won't let me use the dual axis, which is annoying), once I home the machine on the last joint to home (1) it stops being able to move in one direction on all axes. If I try and move it in the other direction it doesn't move. 

I am attaching the previous version which uses a different config of limit switches, and seems to work fine - davemill-vfd.hal & davemill-vfd.ini
The new config is davemill-vfd-ind.hal & davemill-vfd-ind.hal

Does this make any sense to anyone?
   thanks
 
*** SOLVED *** see my post below

probably because after homing you need to move axes not joints. I think what you are describing is expected behaviour.
If you run the axis gui, the display changes from reporting joint dro's to axes dro's on homing.
Just install home switches to all axes and get in the habit of homing as soon as you turn the machine on.

Ok I have looked further into it and the problem doesn't seem to be related to the configuration as it is now happening with both configurations.

I am running from a parallel port on linuxCNC 2.8.1

What was happening is that when I start up AXIS, I can move the dual X axis, the Y axis and I can move the Z in one direction and as soon as I move the Z axis all axes will only move in one direction (and if I try and move it in the other direction the numbers in AXIS increase but the axis doesn't move. In fact it has happened to one axis all the other axes start behaving the same.

The motor drivers don't seem to be lighting up any error lights. I am using a cheap eBay 5 axis parallel port breakout.

After putting an oscilloscope on the pulse pins I eventually worked out what was happening. The voltage of the pulses was consistent when it was moving in one direction but if you looked in the opposite direction they were getting weaker after a period of time. So it would work in one direction but in the other it might move a couple of steps and then stop.

The core of the problem was that those breakouts need 5V and I had assumed if I gave it 12V instead (which the inductive sensors wanted) it would make 5V from it... they don't, so it was scavenging a tiny current from somewhere and for some reason if the direction pin was high it used less current to make the pulses on the pulse pins than if it was low so it only went in one direction.

It was all the more opaque because the inductive sensors obviously somehow drew more current in some way so it worked better with switch end-stops than with inductive ones, which made me think that the problem was software not hardware... that's a day I won't get again.

Thanks, chips are being made as we speak. And I am feeling more comfortable now it is working again (it is amazing how edgy having bits of the workshop broken makes me feel.