I wasn't ignoring CyborgCNC's warnings, in fact I thought it might be important enough for a new thread.
Ok, I hear the word "breakout" and I think of a breakout box. I made a simple one to debug RS-232 issues in the old days. I was ignoring those in my research because I thought it was something else. A little surfing has proved it's an entirely different thing.
The opto-isolation sounds like a good idea. I'd like to be more than optically isolated from this sucker.
If *I* was building a controller from scratch, of course I'd get one of these. But somehow DeepGroove or whomever built this controller didn't feel the same way at the time.So, just how bad is it to not have a breakout board???
It's not my mill or controller. I don't know whether the actual owner wants to put any money into improving it yet. He got it for free to begin with. I suspect he'll want to see if it can do anything useful for him first. Thankfully I got the laptop for free too from my brother last year. It won't run on the battery for any length of time so I always use it on A/C and I think the bottom of the case is cracked. I don't like to wantonly destroy any computer hardware, but in the grand scheme of things I'd rather gamble with that than say something bad happening to the mill, motors, etc.
Thanks,
...Ath
![[xx(]](./images/smilies/smiley11.gif "Dead")
Never did take DC. But I do vaguely remember a discussion of back EMF. 