Hi Dave and David--
Thanks for your replies.
I won't try to rehash the saga of my experiences with Mach3 here, as it will just clog everything up. However for reference, you can see some long descriptions of what I've been dealing with, over at my thread on Warp9:
https://warp9td.com/index.php/kunena/7-general-discussion/7437-system-reliability-win-xp-sp3-mach3-ethernet-ssBasically, I don't like or trust Mach3 any more. It was fine for prototypes, but I've been using this machine to make 1,000 copies of a small plastic part this summer, and the occasional random freezes and errors with Mach3 are a significant irritant. On top of that, there's the known bug within Mach3 where the axes will sometimes continue moving on their own, while you're just trying to jog a wee bit here and there to set the origin. Here's my thread where I was trying to figure out what to do about that:
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,37608.msg257051.html#msg257051I'm using 1mm diameter endmills for the parts we're making here, and we've already snapped off half a dozen of them or so, just on acccount of this irritating bug.
Anyway, thanks for the replies, but these are the reasons why we're heading for Mach4, or maybe something like Flashcut if Mach4 isn't better.
Thanks again and best regards--
--dave