Drivers operating in erratic way

[John11668]

Being honest Daz I dont really understand the ins and outs.
I was advised by a chap I met at the Alexander palace model show( member of the society of experimental engineers and I understand he was their CNC guru) that in order to run Mach 3 on a 64 bit machine I needed a UC100 . It would not drive even a single stepper when I first tried .
I took his advice and it then worked.
Same gentleman guided me here so his advice seems sound enough.
He may well be reading this thread !

[the great waldo]

Hi John
Just a thought , have you tried registering from a smart phone ? Or set up a gmail account.

Cheers
Andrew

[John11668]

Hi Andrew
I am in touch with Balazs via the CNCdrive page and he tells me the software is not recognising a video card which is adequate for the software ,
Unfortunately it is a Dell machine , and the Video card is integral on the motherboard .
In such circumstances I am not sure whether I can add a better video card into one of the card slots and let it find its own driver , or whether I am stuck with what is there .

[dazp1976]

Hi Andrew
I am in touch with Balazs via the CNCdrive page and he tells me the software is not recognising a video card which is adequate for the software ,
Unfortunately it is a Dell machine , and the Video card is integral on the motherboard .
In such circumstances I am not sure whether I can add a better video card into one of the card slots and let it find its own driver , or whether I am stuck with what is there .

Laptop or desktop?
Most laptops can't have one added.
Most desktops can.
My Dell desktop is a 780 and has a PCI express port. I added a Radeon 7470 to it (low profile).
Have a look at the spec of your machine to see if it mentions internal PCI ports.

[John11668]

Desk top Daz. Del optiplex 380 upgraded to win 8.1. The Dell help page doesn't help much.
Looks to have three empty card slots at the base of the motherboard.
Will one of those accomodate a graphics card,?, Which one ? , and what is a decent card to get ?
Will it be plug and play or will it need configured

[dazp1976]

Desk top Daz. Del optiplex 380 upgraded to win 8.1. The Dell help page doesn't help much.
Looks to have three empty card slots at the base of the motherboard.
Will one of those accomodate a graphics card,?, Which one ? , and what is a decent card to get ?
Will it be plug and play or will it need configured

I'm not familiar with Win 8.1 (wasn't around for very long though, hmmmm).

Checked my optiplex 780 earlier. Just to prove a point:
Has a 64bit processor, Core 2 duo E7500, 2.95ghz.
DDR3 ram, 4gb.
Radeon 7470 upgrade.
Running WinXP, Mach3 through parallel port.
Faultless.

Is this the motherboard below?
If so the black slot 3rd from left after the 2 white ones is a PCI express x16 graphics slot.
As suggested, try updating existing driver for on board chip first.
If still no good then my 7470 works great so anything around those spec should be good enough.
(I'd go for a 2gb DDR5 if you do some 3D type cutting with long code) you don't need spend too much.

380 board?


Radeon 7470
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-spec...-7470-oem.c299
Cost me £15 at the time.

[John11668]

Do you think this one would be up to the job
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-AMD-...53.m1438.l2649

[John11668]

Hi John
Just a thought , have you tried registering from a smart phone ? Or set up a gmail account.

Cheers
Andrew

So many options Andrew .. Will maybe give it a go

[Neale]

Being honest Daz I dont really understand the ins and outs.
I was advised by a chap I met at the Alexander palace model show( member of the society of experimental engineers and I understand he was their CNC guru) that in order to run Mach 3 on a 64 bit machine I needed a UC100 . It would not drive even a single stepper when I first tried .
I took his advice and it then worked.
Same gentleman guided me here so his advice seems sound enough.
He may well be reading this thread !

Probably me, although "guru" is putting it a bit strong. Sorry I can't help with UCCNC issues as I have never used it for real, just had a look at the demo version. I have had graphics card issues myself, although installing the latest graphics driver helped the last time this happened. Glad you found this site - great source of help and sounds as if someone is now guiding you.

[John11668]

Hi Neale , and nice to hear from you again. Sorry if you feel that guru is too strong a term (I did not set out to cause embarrassment) but your colleagues on the stand on that day clearly felt you were their specialist , and therefore the man to advise me . I certainly appreciated your advice . Thanks again

While UCCNC will be an interesting sideline for me, the urgency has abated due to the fact that Mach 3 seems to be working for me at the moment.
I still do not fully understand why but I suspect that the quality of Kit was my main Issue, so am keen to explore that topic
I can see that this thread has now run its course, so maybe i need to start a new one for advice on which kit will give me a robust control system .