There are at least two exceptions which work well, and a preferred option might be the PMDX-2PARPCI which will work on a computer which has a PCI connector on the main motherboard. We need to take care, here, as cheap solutions have proven to be frequently ineffective because they often make the port work for a printer, but have not fully implemented all the aspects of a parallel port and won’t work fully with Mach3. Several companies now make add-on parallel ports which usually take the form of additional “cards” of electronics which fit inside the computer and add a parallel port. Mach3 expects to send its control signals out of the parallel port, so we need a solution for modern computers. Second, running Mach3 requires a parallel “printer” port, or some way of coping with the fact that most modern computers do not have a parallel port, as it is being removed from computers very quickly because of the move to USB. In this case, the Support menu produces a sub-menu so that System Requirements can be chosen from there. The > symbol means “and then” usually as a sub-menu or as the next choice, and it’s a convention we will use throughout this series. Go to then choose Support > System Requirements. To run Cut2D or VCarve Pro, as suggested later in this series, you will need at least 1Gb memory if the computer runs Windows XP or 2Gb if it runs Windows 7. Personally, I believe more memory is better, but it depends on whether you intend to use the computer to run software other than Mach3. The minimum specification is at a site with which you should become familiar.įirst, the computer must have a minimum processor speed of 1GHz, and 512Gb memory, so that covers most computers produced over the last 10 years or so. The latest generation of computers feature all manner of ECO-friendly power-saving features which tend to wreak havoc with latency and jitter, so don’t feel you are missing anything if you run Mach3 with an old computer.
In some respects, you will not want the latest all-singing all-dancing computer system because of issues with latency and jitter (see Part 1). The computing requirements for running Mach3 are low, and a powerful, fast and expensive computer is not required. There are some choices to be made concerning computer systems, governed by the requirements of Mach3, and the issues of the parallel port and the use of Windows XP or Windows 7, as mentioned in Part 1.
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