Mach3

What works

program opens, displays a screenset.

machine can be jogged around, can run G-Code (not tested connected to real hardware)

plugins can be loaded as long as the required MFC runtime is installed

What does not

mfc42 is required in order to install without errors and to run the software

I made a plugin a few years ago to be able to run mach3 fullscreen by changing some of the border styles and resizing the window, however when i try this plugin the window vanishes, so some plugins may fail to work.

splash screen does not work properly:
entry in program bar, just has a ? in it
an area of the screen "freezes" with whatever was last there but the splash is not shown
after splash timeout main window appears normally

I also tried connecting a USB interface board (input only MUHI board) that pretends to be two joysticks, linux recognizes these and shows hidraw0 and hidraw1 in /dev

once the winebus service is started and the two HID devices are given rw permissions for all users test software in wine can access the joysticks, however the mach3 plugin does not, i suspect this is due to presenting a generic joystick to "windows" rather than that specific PID/VID device.

Workarounds

before installing mach3, mfc42 needs to be installed, using:

winetricks mfc42
installed the missing package/s but for some reason on my system it installed using a german installer (uk english system)

to fix my fullscreen plugin issue wine can be configured not to allow the window manager to decorate the window, then the fullscreen behaves as it would on windows.

to fix the splash issue wine can be configure to let the window handle its own rendering, then the splash renders normally hoever the window no longer plays nicely with the program bar (minimizes to an icon on desktop)

What was not tested

controlling/interfacing with real hardware

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Intel
• Driver: open source

Additional Comments

appears to run smoother/faster on linux mint 18.3 than under windows 7 on same machine