WELsoft Website Notes
Note 4 (NB not WELturn or WELmill)
Target audience: WELedit users with Apple Mac Computers
Subject: Configuring the computer and serial communication with an Emco Compact 5 CNC Lathe
Veterinary surgeon Len Fulham e-mailed the following tips from Australia:
I installed WELedit on my Mac (350MHz G3, System 8.1) emulating a PC using Virtual PC (VPC) Ver 2.01 running Windows 95. WELedit runs happily in this environment. Unfortunately the emulated serial ports under VPC are pretty poor, but there is an option in VPC to capture serial output as a text file in the Mac system. Using this facility I output WELedit to a text file. The text file is then sent to the lathe using the communications module in Claris Works (Ver 5).
To connect to the lathe I am using two cables together: one is the standard Windows cable wired as described in WELedit, the other is a Apple Imagewriter cable. The Apple cable has a 25 pin plug which fits the 25 pin socket on the Windows cable. (I tried an Apple modem cable, which looks much the same, but it would not work.)
Now I have the situation where I can input CNC instructions in the comfort of my office, save WELedit output as a text file on a disk which I can feed into the lathe using an old Mac SE 30 which can sit in the workshop catching swarf.
I bought the lathe from the local TAFE college. I was told there was some problem with it as they were unable to load code into it - so I got it pretty cheap. It came with a serial cable but it was wired quite different to the WELedit instructions and would not work as presented. After I rewired the lathe plug and the socket it all worked fine. Seems there is nothing wrong with the lathe at all!
April 2000