help required

i am new to this forum...so at first i req one and all to excuse if there is any mistake in my question
i want to controll 4 steppermotors simultaneously,can i do it through parallelport using 2003 or some other chip
is there any other better way that is less in complication
kiran

kkk525 said:

i am new to this forum...so at first i req one and all to excuse if there is any mistake in my question
i want to controll 4 steppermotors simultaneously,can i do it through parallelport using 2003 or some other chip
is there any other better way that is less in complication
kiran

Click to expand...

Stepper motors require 4 drive signals to each one, you don't have 16 output lines available on a parallel port. There are many different ways of over coming this - probably the easiest would be to use a stepper motor driver I/C, these usually need just two wires - one for direction, and one to step it - this would only require 8 output lines, and they would also simplify your programming.

You could also use a micro-controller, such as a PIC, a 16F876 has enough I/O to receive an RS232 fed from the computer, and feed 4 stepper motors via ULN2003's or some other kind of driver. This would simplify the PC programming, but at the added complication of programming the PIC - 'swings and roundabouts'.

thank u godwin
will try, but pic is entierly new concept to me but i will do my groundwork on it now
thank u once again
kiran