As far as I know, the current boards are the only ones that will be developed. The board is given its firmware on powerup every time. This is supposed to be advantageous in that fixes can be applied easily and if power or comms to the SS are lost, the firmware gets wiped and the board (and hopefully the machine) shuts down. It doesn't happen if the SS is powered externally.

I was under the impression that the charge pump in my DIYCNC BOB received its signal from Mach 3 via the SS through some sort of opto coupling however, what looks to be happening is that the SS is generating the chargepump signal itself, independently of Mach (which it must as it is on the USB port) and the chargepump signal keeps going even if comms to the SS are lost (think I've understood it).

Part of the problem is the poor documentation available on the SS. It seems it is "all in Greg's head" and nothing is down in print. I'm willing to bet that if the docs were as good as some of the ones I've had for my BOB's, people like Lee or Irving would have been able to spot this before anyone discovered it the hard way. I think this has come as a massive shock to Greg, such a fundamental flaw. At least with the downloadable firmware, a fix is (should be) relatively easy and permanent.

Regards all, Jeff.