Boxford v190 cnc

[depronman]

Update on the HP small format PC that Bernie kindlt sent me - it may help other
I have spent all evening trying to get linux to see two parallel ports

There is one onboard from the motherboard and I installed another PCI parport in the only avialable slot (White slote at the very right hand side of the m/b)
Firstly the PCI card MUST be a slim height one as the HP is not very tall, not a problem as the ones I bought from ebay a few weeks ago are slim enough but I will need to modify the mounting bracket or back plate of the card as its meant for a full height case

having fitted the card and rebooted fire up terminal and type in lspci -v
this reported the PCI cardat address 1100 and 1108
from past experience I know that you use the latter of the two addresses with 0x before it in linuxcnc hal file, so this means the pci card is seen at 0x1108
so far so good

now in termin type dmesg | grep parport
This reported -
parport0: 0x378 irq7
lp0: using parport0

So happy days linux can see both parallel ports

so, run a dummy stepconfig wizard, set to 2 parallel ports, crash any data in the rest of it
Start Linux and it crashes, stating it cannot find a parallel port
no great problem, i've had this issue before as Linuxcnc tries to define the parallel ports as 0 and 1, but this sometimes works and sometimes doesn't work, but you can amend this in the HAL file by using the actual address instead of 0 and 1

loadrt hal_parport cfg="0x0378 out 0x1108 in" this should do it

try to start linuxcnc, still crashes with same error

I spent 3 hours going round in circles, removing the pci parport, changed it for another one, tried another pci card in the slot on the M/B with a spare sound card, all worked perfectly
What the hell is going on !!!!!

Into the BIOS and set the parport on the M/B to bidirectional - same problem, set it to all possible setting, still the same problem, until I set it to disabled
You read this right DISABLED
saved BIOS setting and rebooted linux
run the above two terminal commands and was surprised that the PCI card AND the M/B port was still seen (even though the BIOS was told to disable the onboard parport)
Started Linuxcnc and no errors this time, into HALSHOW, pins, parports, 0, show all input pins (10, 11, 12, 13, 15) then port 1 show all input pins (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15)
connect a parallel cable to each port, using a jumper wire in pin 25 touch pin numbers above and HALSHOW lit up each pin
So, all is working correctly

But would you 'adam and eve it', it only works if the onboard parallel port is DISABLED in the BIOS

I thought it was worth posting my findings to save others getting frustrated / giving up

On another note - I cannot get linux mint to install from a pen drive, it will never start from the pen drive even after F9 for the boot menu and selecting USB Boot
The pen works on other PC's / laptops perfectly so its not a pen drive issue
Any help on this would be appreciated.

I installed Linuxcnc from a DVD, but only had the mint version on a pen drive. I can't find my stock of blank DVD disk to burn the mint iso to a DVD to try, will have a look tomorrow when her in doors is at work (sure she as put them somewhere safe)

Cheers,
Paul