Mach3 -> Camtronics -> Parallel P Replacement

just a guess as you aready got the main thing done and the mach3 config importer will do that all for you

Is the + - on the 7i76e board essentially giving a hardwire physical option for direction rather than software?

The 7I76E has differential Step/Dir outputs
Differential signalling has better noise immunity especially when high
step rates are used (for servo drives which may have MHz step rates for example)

That said, for single ended use, you can chose whether to use the + or - outputs
to get the desired direction or step pulse polarity (though you can also do this in
the hal file)

I would like a little more education than mine about the 7i76e W10,11&13 jumpers.
The manual indicates default jumper positions, page 11 to the right.

My board came with them to the left.

Reading PCW's reply, I am inclined to leave these jumpers alone and to left position.

"When W10,W11&W13 are in the right hand position the encoder input mode is differential".
"When W10,W11&W13 are in the left hand position the encoder input is mode is single ended or "TTL".

Could someone let me know if this is even related.
If so would be correct to leave these to the left?

These need to be set to match your spindle encoder type

If you have a spindle encoder with a single ended interface, the jumpers
should be in the left hand position. If you have a spindle encoder with
a differential interface the jumpers should be in the right hand position

Single ended interface encoders typically have 4 to 6 wires:

A
B
Z (optional)
+5V
GND
Shield (optional)

Differential interface encoders typically have 6 to 9 wires:
A
/A
B
/B
Z (optional)
/Z (optional)
+5V
GND
Shield (optional)

Of course if you are not using a spindle encoder the jumpers don't matter

The spindle encoder on this machine is a magnet.

Coming from the pickup are three wires shielded.
Red, Black & Green.

The three wires coming from the pickup went to a box that facilitated 5v 1A power to the red wire going to the pickup and ground going to both ends.

To the Camtronics control box is the Green (C10 port 10) and Black (C10 COM).

To translate this to the 7i76e would I connect Green to TB3 7 ENCA+ and the Black to TB3 9 GND?

I would like to get rid of the need for the 5V 1A PS.

Would it be correct in connecting Red to TB3 12 +5VP and ditch the 5V 1A PS?

Pics added to help explain what I might be lacking in terminology.

No white smoke.

Set the IP on this thing and put some social distancing from it.

Back to the garage it goes.

OK that's a once per turn index signal so not useful for tapping but possible usable for threading.
You could connect that to the 7I76E's A or B or IDX input since you are not actually using an
encoder and any of these pins can be used to read a 5V signal (if set to TTL mode)

Your ping times look pretty random so my guess would be that you have a Intel MAC
If so, you will need to set the Ethernet driver mode to disable IRQ coalescing.
This is explained in the hm2_eth manual page

man hm2_eth

Threading is all I have done with this before. Super happy about the potential I have with this 7i76e card!

This is the ethernet adapter info.

04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)

The ping was direct between the network port on the PC and the 7i76e.

Being a little concerned, I pulled the cat-5 -> parallel plug to cat-5 connector I made and ran a ping.

Looks the same.

Thank you for letting me know to have this on my radar.

Yeah, the Realtek driver doesn't have that option so I'm not sure what's going on with the random ping times.

Here's what I get:
peter@pcw-HP-EliteDesk-800-G1-USDT:~/bitfiles$ ping 10.10.10.10
PING 10.10.10.10 (10.10.10.10) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.208 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.130 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.130 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.130 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.133 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=0.132 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=0.129 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=0.129 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=0.129 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=0.130 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=0.130 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=0.130 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=0.129 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=0.129 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=0.130 ms
64 bytes from 10.10.10.10: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=0.142 ms
^C
--- 10.10.10.10 ping statistics ---
16 packets transmitted, 16 received, 0% packet loss, time 15356ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.129/0.135/0.208/0.022 ms

(The first response is slower because the host needs to do a ARP transaction )