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Need Help! PCI Parallel port, not enough current for G540?

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I had a different thread open here, but I opted to abandon it because the problem apparently is not the Gecko drive. It is working swimmingly.

So here's the quick and dirty rundown:

WinXP, PCI parallel port, Mach3, G540, and a 4x4 machine.

I've wired up a relay to port 5 on the G540 and have bench-tested it with a 3.3v power supply. I've got one side of the relay coil wired to an external power supply, and it happily kicks over when I send 3.3v to the G540 pin #17. Works beautifully.

I've got Mach3 configured properly, because when I toggle the spindle, I have 3.3v at pin #17 on the parallel port and at the output end of the parallel plug. Again - bench tested, volt-meter sees 3.3v on the computer's parallel port and also downstream on the parallel cable as well when I click the toggle switch.

The problem is that when I plug the parallel plug into the G540 and click the toggle, *nothing* happens. No satisfying click of the relay.

I've unplugged it, checked voltage again, and it's still going from very low to 3.3v when I click the toggle.

The next test I did was to wired in an LED to see if it's lighting up properly. When wired to my external 3.3v power supply, the LED shines brightly. But when I wire it to the parallel plug and click the spindle toggle, the LED is so dim it took me a while to figure out that it was even on.

So... this leads me to believe that there's a low current problem. Voltage is good (3.3v every time), but the amps are so low that the G540 doesn't register any activity.


That's the bottom line at this point. Do I need to wire in a transistor and additional power source? Can the PCI parallel board be modified internally? There are jumpers and pins that are accessible. Hopefully this is a problem someone else has run into before, and that there's a simple solution.

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