Thank you tim for jumping in -
I think what marco offers is a wonderful board, I have no qualms against anything that Macro sells, but I also feel I have not paid less money to him to get a deficient board(my version is 1.6), I call it a deficient board because what is mentioned in the manual and what is shown in the image presented in the manual is that of a board that talks about complete functionality and all the IC's on it,
Tell me is it wrong to make peers aware of the problems they may face and just that they need to confirm if they will get a board which is fully populated. Tell me can you guarantee that if he sells a new board and that board will not be void of any chips, software problems I can understand - but leaving out hardware is cost cutting as Marco has himself stated on his forum that he was not aware of the issue.
and as to Marco solving the issues - he has just mentioned about adding the Z axis quad opto isolator chip for the limits, what about the rest of the chips - he never answered questions on those ones, I wanted to confirm from him if the firmware supports the Z axis and u axis step dir outputs - which I think I should confirm by adding chips and finding out myself,
http://www.lightobject.info/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=615here is the additional costs - hcpl 2630 - USD 3 each X2, 26LS31 USD1, TLP - 4, 13 usd for 3 on ebay, - thats 20USD - I am not bothered about the money - but more of the time and effort involved.
I only feel that if people ask him questions on the missing chips he will only improve his Quality control on supplying fully populated boards - and as a prospective customer it would be better to confirm than regret
I hope I have only been fair -
I also apologize if my language has been rude anywhere - its difficult with a knee surgery and trying to hunt for the IC's in the local market.
Marco - if you are reading this - rest assure that as a person I have nothing against you - but also is a fact that a few boards with missing chips were supplied and mine was with the most missing! and you having accepted it only upholds your dedication to what you do- please do keep up the good work.
Bart - i only post here so that it might help and also to get help - if you feel otherwise kindly disqualify me for this forum-
Regards
Irfanulla