Right, so little update. Got a call from smallcncsuport.com. Said I'd need 15 or mins or so to setup. So I got outside, run the power extension out to my shed etc, plug in and jog and the f'ing thing works just as expected! So yeh... egg on face situation kind of. But I will swear on my life I did everything reasonable to convince that machine to come out of estop yesterday... Cycled power on the machine, restarted laptop, changed usb ports (not that that should matter, but gave it a go), exited Mach about 10 times and nothing... but today different story.

However, he did say that there is a common problem with the plastic guard cover. Its like a little door that covers the cutting tool. It has a switch on the same circuit as the estop apparently. I completely forgot about mine because I removed the plastic cover when i first got the machine... but the circuit that opens and closes with the cover is still there. So I (we) think the estop was being tripped by the guard switch circuit possibly for no reason... I'll see how it goes in the future... if I get any more random estops I might just take the circuit out completely. I don't really know why its there. The guard itself makes sense but having the door on the same circuit as the estop is a little over the top.

Anyway, I hate wasting peoples time, so I felt like a right noob when I got the call back and had to say the machine was working. But I'm trying to tell myself that I did everything I could yesterday... and that the guard switch is the root of the problem which I wasn't to know about.

Interestingly though by my reading of the circuit diagram there is only one switch on the estop circuit... but then again I am a noob... and the manual appears to be for the old version of the machine with a parallel port.