hi.just an update on whats been going on here. after lots of testing and pulling hair out I found the fault. I have a newer version of windows 10 and this version cuts the signals to the parallel port. So know signal was getting to the Bob. After looking around on the net and thinking about this for a bit, I paid for a new Ethernet smoothstepper card. this turned up today and after following the utube how to do videos I was able to get the card working without to much effort. the nice thing about the card is that it has little LED,s that inform you what the card is doing, which was great help for me. so all is well in my world if not in my wallet. thanks for your help. michael