Beginner configuration of Chinese red board TB6560 3 axis breakout

Hi everyone,

First time LinuxCNC user here, and I am running into some silly issues that I hope can be resolved easily. A GRBL board on a machine of mine died, and so I decided to make the switch to LinuxCNC with a chinese TB6560 board with integrated 3 amp drivers, however, I didn't know that it had a bit of a bad reputation before I picked it up. 

I have LinucCNC installed on an old Core2Duo motherboard with integrated parallel port, configured the pinout for the parallel port and all that appears to be running. However, whenever I try and test the axis the motors just shake, hum, and don''t move smoothly. I've run across this problem many times before on homemade 3d printers, but it has always come down to a stupid wiring mistake. However, no amount of messing with currents, timings, or wiring is seeming to resolve the issue.

Does anybody have any example configurations or general advise? Should I return the board to amazon in favor of a simple breakout board and individual drivers?

Here is the board I purchased: 

And Here is a PDF manual I found about this board:

I also noticed that during my configuration, my latency was incredibly bad, hitting 200,000 ns (200 microseconds) when jumping through youtube very quickly. It has a GTX 760 I believe, as the core 2 duo does not have integrated graphics. Is this the main reason for my issues? If so, does this mean that I should pick up a new motherboard for the project? I'm not married to this setup, and I have a 4670s cpu on my desk as a backup in case this older setup isn't cutting it. 

Thanks everyone!

Have you tried swapping step and dir wires? Don't assume that the documentation on the board is correct.

If the motors are buzzing then it probably indicates that the drives are enabled at least.

What step length are you using? Try 10,000 in case the board has really slow optos.

Hey Andy, thank you for the fast reply.

Yes, the amplifier enable pin is working correctly. When logic is flipped on that pin nothing at all happens with any of the drivers.

I have tried step lengths from 5000 to 20,000, with no real apparent difference besides speed (pitch) of the motor buzzing.

To add more context, the motor sometimes rotates a revolution or so then stops, but 95% of the times it just bounces back and fourth a step (or, maybe a few). I had it move an axis of my machine a few inches, but it was incredibly rough and bouncy. But, it shows that things are indeed happening.

I just tested things when flipping axis step and direction pins in the step configurator, and nothing improves. Do you have any other recommendations on things I should try?

(Power down before) Disconnect the motors and check that the A and B phases are on the wires you think they are.

An easy way to tell is to short two together (disconnected completely from the drive) and see if the motor gets harder to turn.

The pairs that make the motor hard to turn are the two ends of the same winding (A+ and A- or B+ and

You can also use a multimeter.

This trick can also be used to work out the correct pair polarity with an 8-wire motor (which you can't really do with a multimeter)

I have verified the wiring on the 6-wire motors using a meter, and have verified that they are wired correctly on the board as far as the manual states. On Monday I am going to check the input signal to the board and the output coils using my oscilloscope to see what that tells me.

Any recommendations on other boards or configurations for a low-cost, but also low-demand setup? For my lathe (the next retrofit) I want to go all-in, but I want to make sure linuxcnc works for me on this machine before I invest a lot into several retrofits.

Try setting the jog speed very low and manually jog using keyboard or +- on the GUI.