I hoped I had beaten this problem.

So here is the problem. My y axis just moves in one direction. If I reverse the direction in Mach 3 nothing happens. I read that I need to set the drive to low settings in Mach3 which I did. And the motor on the y axis moved in the correct directions. However today the y axis is again just moving in one direction. I tried setting the axis in reverse in Mach 3, but know joy. I reset the drive the high, no joy, reset to low no joy. When the machine does move, and this was a test air run, it just moves in a sort of zig zag movement and draws what looks like the top of a castle wall. Anyone have any ideas. Thanks

Whoever told you that doesn't know what they are talking about, the active state has nothing to do with if it moves or not, it only changes the direction or should say if it gives 5v or 0v when the direction key is pressed.

If when you change the direction the DRO in mach3 is moving then this will be, like I mentioned before in the previous post, down to a partially broken wire or loose connection on the Direction wire coming from the breakout board to the drive, there is very little else that it can be other than a faulty drive.

The only other thing it could be is if you are using a parallel port that only gives 3.5v which sometimes isn't enough to distinguish if the signal is hi or lo so the direction change doesn't get detected. This is easily checked by putting a meter on the Direction wires and checking the voltages, in one direction it will be 0v or close to it and the other it should be 5v or close to it. If you get between 2.5v and 3.5v then this will be your problem.

However, you wouldn't get the same problem on all axis so I doubt that this is your problem!