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Hi Chris,
It's likely you tried attaching photos etc larger than the 1.6Mb limit on LinuxCNC. Any digital camera will create a photo much larger than that limit.I use a free download program called paint.net for editing simple stuff. Bring a photo into it then do a "save as". It will take you to a preview image where you can do a bit before saving. Up the top left is a slider which allows you to compress the photo. The preview shows how bad the final image will be. You can compress almost any happy snap to below 1Mb and still have acceptable quality for posting. The "okay" button is down at bottom right.
There is a black round side plate on my machine that allows access to the horizontal quill clamp.See attached. I some cases they have another quill handle there which would be handy for manual use. I unclamped mine but the quill is stuck with what looks like old oil varnishing.
I'll have a look, if I get time, to see where the hydraulic hose goes. I suspect it will have the same rotary joint as the Z quill. It will need disconnecting there. There will also be an anti rotation/ travel stop pin somewhere.Then the whole quill will need to come out.
I'm confident you don't need to bleed the hydraulic hoses. The trapped air will act as an accumulator. So the air will compress up to the hydraulic pressure of 180 Bar. In fact I suspect if it is bled the switch/pump feedback will have conniptions. It would only have the flexibility of the hoses and oil to slow the switching cycle down.
If the claws on the tool clamp aren't retracted by the hydraulics the tool holder wont go all the way into position. The claws sit naturally in the clamped position forced by the springs. So if it looks like the tool holder needs to go further by a bit less than a centimeter then the springs are working, at least to some extent. If you have adjusted the setting distance without the hydraulics pulling the claws back then you have messed up the correct position for the claws.

Cheers,
David

The non-native parallel port is a parallelized serial port. The Linux kernel takes it as a serial PCIE port. That's where linuxcnc comes into conflict and raises the alarm. The older parallel port PCI expansion boards were neater and sent the OS the message (I'm a parallel port). This Generation does not, that is why this alarm appears that tells us (continue, it may not be a mistake). The issue is that linuxcnc starts in a messy way and I would like to solve it.

Further David
Yes I have the English Operators Manual and the same shows a few drawings
No instructions so I have been flying blind and relying on help from members of this group
Thanks to all.
Cheers Chris McMullen

Nice! that link is helpful. So to summarize the next steps for a very basic test setup with no mill: 

• Ill need a older PC with a native parrellport
• Load a copy of linuxcnc and Probebasic (ill follow some youtube) 
•  parrellport cable to breakout board (i can prob find soemthing basic on amazon, if that goes well later upgrade to Mesa)Seem thats incorrect and need something a bit more robust like a "7I96 STEP/IO Step & dir plus I/O card"
  • I/O OUT  --> to drive steppers via commercial driver like a stepper online DM542T
  • I/O IN --> to read my two X and Y encoders. These are typically two pins so it can sens direction, so 4 needed Xa Xb and Ya Yb from the encoders. maybe even a Za and Zb if i want to move the Z axis.    
  • Some config file or other tweak to get the "encoder.N.counter-mode" to work from that link...
    
    Probably a little stuck on the last bullet. Not sure what to google. Am i on the right track?
    Its my first post so sorry if this is old news. 
    
    

Hello David
Thanks for writing. As far as I know the hydraulic tool changers were both working until I interfered with them. Now the horizontal one is not working and been like that fo two years. I suspect the springs are broken but I don't know haw to pull the unit apart. There is hydraulic pressure in the lines but maybe the lines need bleeding. I cant see how best to do that.
I need to send you some photos. I tried once before (years ago) and failed.
I am going to be away for a few days. Promise some action on my return
Cheers Chris McMullen
Auckland New Zealand

There is a guy who sells flexihal boards in aus.....i dont know what his site is, but he goes by Jaymis

Some of Mesa's cards have dedicated inputs for hand-wheel encoders.
But this is so slow counting that you can use normal pins and the encoder component to get the hand-wheels inputs.
"normal pins" means parallel port pins, mesa input pins or some other digital io in pin.
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man9/encoder.9.html

This is a weird-ish question, but LinuxCNC is so vast, I thought I'd ask:

I have a build where I'm making a trunnion inside the same area where the XYZ axis operates. Now that trunnion is growing up to have parts attached to it...

Is there a way to define a "no go zone" within the XYZ build box so that I don't accidentally crash into it?

It would need several different sections, ie, a series of boxes could be defined within which the controller is supposed to know that's not OK and send that 'move would exceed limitations' message if I tried to violate it.

I'm thinking the answer is "with great complexity comes great responsibility..."

But I thought I'd ask.

Cheers.