MSM and Mach3 Versions

[DaveCVI]

<Oct 5 2011>
Hi all,
I've been using a 3.43.48 version of Mach - things have gone well and the issues I had with 3.43.45 seem to be gone.

I know that 3.43.48 fixes a problem with the mach tool change led (I added this to the release notes for MSM 1.1.16).

I then noticed that Brian released 3.43.49 - but I don't know the deltas between .48 and .49.... and he has not updated the mach change log since 3.43.45.

Dave

[DaveCVI]

<Feb 11, 201>
I'm told that if you are using an ethernet smooth stepper, the you need to use mach 3.43.58. The MSM users I know using it for that reason, seem to be having reasonable luck with that version.

I've been tying mach 3.43.58 and so far so good - I just have not had enough time with it for it "to be proven" yet.

Your mileage may vary...

Dave

[DaveCVI]

<apr 5, 2012>
It seems time for an update re mach revs.

With the release of MSM 1.3.x there are now two different mach recommendations (depending on if you want mill or lathe modes).

For MSM Mill use:
CVI still recommends using mach 3.43.37
It's stable, pretty trouble free and has the most MSM user history. Probably 90% of the MSM Mill users are on this mach release.

For MSM Turn and Mill-Turn:
These feature sets require a min of mach 3.43.38.
However there is a significant bug for lathe operation in every mach release between 3.43.38 and 3.43.62 (See MSM release notes). 3.43.62 does fix several serious (as in machine crash severity) bugs, so mach 3.43.62 is the best choice as I write this.

However, FYI I have posted this on the yahoo mach list:

It seems that there are some new timing issues with 3.43.62:
1) when using keyboard keys to jog in continuous jog mode, mach seems to sometimes to miss the first key down event. I have to release the key and push it down a 2nd time to get the jog motion started. This happens about 50% of the time. Does not happen on mach revs < 3.43.62.

2) Scripts seem to be running noticeably slower. Same scripts (no changes) that used to be quicker now seem like they lag and run slow. - I am also seeing script pauses where there did not used to be pauses.
(I've run the MSM probing scripts so many times while testing MSM releases, that I know the timing an execution pattern of the script actions.) With 3.43.62, the execution timing is noticeably different.
The scripts run OK, they just run differently.

Dave

[DaveCVI]

<Oct 1, 2012>
On 9/25/2012 Mach 3.43.66 became the latest Mach3 lock down release and it is also now the CVI recommended Mach release for use with MSM.

Dave

[DaveCVI]

Here is the history of mach versions 62 and 66 -

Once upon a time mach versions were released on an irregular schedule. Unfortunately Artsoft was never good at publishing release notes for each release. That made it hard to know what had changed between releases. In those days I was doing active development of MSM and was up to speed with each release of mach3. The MSM release notes are full of bug reported to Artsoft and which version of mach3 they were verified against. Most of those were never fixed by Artsoft.

To make matters even harder, each mach 3 release tended to fix some things, maybe add a new feature and to frequently broke something that used to work. Quality control was never a strong point for mach3 development. Much of MSM's popularity is that it has internal code to work around many known mach3 bugs. To make things really confusing, Art soft had a (IMHO) bad habit of releasing multiple different mach exe files which all reported themselves as the same mach version number. Thus, you don't always know that the version of mach that you are running is actually the same as the one a friend is running - even though they both report the same version numbers. This point will be come up again a little bit later in this post...

When MSM was written, I was working closely with Artsoft and they implemented several key features at my request. The MSM implementation utilizes several of those features.

Back in those days (last 1/2 of 2012), the latest, stable version of Mach which had all the features MSM depended on was 3.43.66. That is the version CVI recommends for use with MSM. Not all of the expected features are in mach version 62. 3.43.66 is still the MSM recommended version if you are running XP, Win 7, or 8. As of 2012, 66 was the last current release, stable with MSM and easily available.

Then time passed and Microsoft released WIN 10. When WIN 10 was first released, mach3 was fine on the first few W10 releases. Then Microsoft tightened up security and a side effect was that the mach3 (perhaps due to the parallel port driver) would no longer load under WIN 10. The symptom is that mach3 will hang forever when loading under newer versions of win 10. That caused lots of complaints to Artsoft - users wanted a fix for this problem. However, Artsoft (USA) was then pushing Mach 4 and instead they have quit all support for Mach3. They essentially told Mach 3 users, "tough, buy mach 4 instead".

There was a third party (I have forgotten the company name) who didn't like the situation, so they figured out what the problem was between Mach3 and Win 10. They fixed it by patching the mach3.exe version 3.43.62 binary file. I'm guessing that was all they could do since Artsoft would not let anyone look at the sources for mach3 - preventing a proper fix to mach3 for the problem. Why did that company fix 62 and not 66 or 67 or any other version? I suspect because 62 was the version they liked and ran internally. They did what they needed form themselves and then their mach3 vs win 10 problem was solved.

After a while Artsoft got tired of customers still complaining about mach3 not running on win 10. an arrangement was made where the third party company gave the binary patched 62 file to Artsoft and Artsoft published it on their web site for download. Artsoft also started saying that the only recommended Mach3 version for win 10 was this patched 62.

NOTE: this means that the 62 version you get from Artsoft today IS NOT THE SAME as the 62 version released in 2012. Further, AFAIK there is no source code which corresponds to the 62 binary available today from Artsoft. Over the year this has lead people to believe that 3.43.62 (binary patched version) is the only recommended mach3 version.

Alas, there are significant features and bug fixes 3.43.66 which do not exist in any of the flavors of 3.43,62. A key example for MSM is that the feature used to support all the single/double probe signal handling was not yet implemented in 3.43.62 (2012 release). I pointed all this out to Artsoft when they posted the binary patched 62 version. They told me they did not care. I believe they did not know what the binary patch was in the modified 62 file and so could not apply it to other released mach3 versions. IMHO Artsoft was not (and still is not) interested in fixing any Mach3 user issues. They simply wanted to minimize the user complaints from Mach3 with Win 10.

So, if you don't run Win 10, there is no reason to run the binary patched version of 3.43.62 (unless that is a version with some particular advantage for your specific uses of mach 3). Run XP, 7 or 8 instead. This get harder and harder to do as other programs (Like almost all browsers) drop support for anything other than win 10. For example, you won't get a current release of most browsers to run on XP.

If you have to run a current version of win 10 for your mach3 cnc control, then you are stuck with the binary patched version of 3.43.62 for mach 3.

Dave