in the wee small hours of sunday morning, my baby took its first steps. No I am not talking about that carbon based type of baby I am talking the silicon, metal and wire type. It was a great feeling and what made it extra special was the fact that my electronics skills have already improved, and I even worked out the kinks in my circuit based on the electonics knowledge I have had hidden in the rusty toolbox part of my brain the last 14 years . There is nothing like soldering a parallel port cable onto a pin header to get those old hot solder nights feelings running again.

But the chips weren't working and I could not work out why. I had tried hard wiring them and the H-bridges were doing what they should but hook it to the parallel port and nothing happened. Then I check the voltage on the Port ~2.4 V ahhahahaha. That was not enough to get the bridges to works. So what do i need to do.......... then the thought hit me, put resistance in the circuit! So armed with some resistors I found laying around bob's you uncle the bridge worked. I now can step forward and backward. Its jittery at the moment and I think that is to do with the fact that I am running them at the wrong voltage and have various findling resistors in the circuit, but they do step. Tonight I am off to the electronics shop to get some real components and some heat shrink covers from the pin header I created. Pics and wiring diagram to follow. Next step the frame.

QUESTION? Should I start writing my own CNC software! It seems like a lot of hard work but I think it might be an opertunity to get a open source .Net project up and running.