Windows 7 64 bit

[Christine88]

So it seems I read that running Mach 3 on a windows 7 64 bit PC with a PCI parallel port card won't work? Can someone confirm this? If that's true then I will have to use my UC-100.

[veng1]

According to the Mach3 support page:

http://www.machsupport.com/software/mach3/ on the requirements page, it will NOT work.

My own experience confirms this. I have it working with 32 bit but did not have much luck with 64 bit. Your mileage may vary.

I'm fairly certain that an external motion controller like a Smooth Stepper will work but they appear to not have all the bugs out for Mach4.

[Christine88]

According to the Mach3 support page:

http://www.machsupport.com/software/mach3/ on the requirements page, it will NOT work.

My own experience confirms this. I have it working with 32 bit but did not have much luck with 64 bit. Your mileage may vary.

I'm fairly certain that an external motion controller like a Smooth Stepper will work but they appear to not have all the bugs out for Mach4.

Luckily I have a UC-100 from another project and it seemed to work great with the Gecko G540 and Mach 3.

[Damin69]

Have only read that it will not work.
I have a dedicated Win7 32Bit machine for my Mill Running Mach3.

[TonyB]

I can confirm that 64 bit is the issue and 32 bit will solve the problem. If you look under Device Manager for something like "Mach3 Pulsing Engine", if it's there then Mach3 will run on that setup. In 64 bit I couldn't ever get that "Mach3 Pulsing Engine" "device" running, but on 32 bit (on the same computer) it was there.

I didn't have complete success, but this was the card I was using on my laptop:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001Q7 ... UTF8&psc=1
I was able to control my machine, but it seems like it was missing steps... so I gave up for now and went back to my desktop PC.

Side note: If you want a cheap way to test whether the 32 bit version of Windows will solve your problem, you can find a 32 bit version of Windows (somewhere on the web) and install it without a registration key. It will complain each time you boot the computer and the background will be black... but if you want to "try before you buy" it's a great solution IMO. Also, if you don't want to clear your 64 bit version of Windows off your PC you can dual boot windows (in other words, have two versions of Windows on your computer, but you choose when to run at startup.)

Hope this helps!

[Christine88]

I can confirm that 64 bit is the issue and 32 bit will solve the problem. If you look under Device Manager for something like "Mach3 Pulsing Engine", if it's there then Mach3 will run on that setup. In 64 bit I couldn't ever get that "Mach3 Pulsing Engine" "device" running, but on 32 bit (on the same computer) it was there.

I didn't have complete success, but this was the card I was using on my laptop:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001Q7 ... UTF8&psc=1
I was able to control my machine, but it seems like it was missing steps... so I gave up for now and went back to my desktop PC.

Side note: If you want a cheap way to test whether the 32 bit version of Windows will solve your problem, you can find a 32 bit version of Windows (somewhere on the web) and install it without a registration key. It will complain each time you boot the computer and the background will be black... but if you want to "try before you buy" it's a great solution IMO. Also, if you don't want to clear your 64 bit version of Windows off your PC you can dual boot windows (in other words, have two versions of Windows on your computer, but you choose when to run at startup.)

Hope this helps!

Yeah dual boot is a good option but my UC-100 seems to work so For I'll just use it.