tar xzvf univstepdiags.tgz
and you should now find a file in the current directory named "univstepdiags"
You must be the root user or have root privledges for the univstepdiags program to connect to the parallel port and run correctly. First, you should run univstepdiags to check that the USC card shows up on the parallel port. The command is :
# ./univstepdiags bus
It should report a Universal Stepper rev 1 on the first possible address, and nothing on any of the other addresses. Next, you should run it again, with commtest as the parameter, and let it run for a while. If you don't have any encoders connected, it should just report every 1000 tests that there were no errors. If you have encoders connected, any movement sensed from the encoders will disturb the test, and errors will be reported. As long as the difference is just one or two counts, that is normal. All high-resolution encoders have some jitter in the readings, even with no actual motion. Kill this test with Ctrl/C.
If that is satisfactory, connect wires between terminals 14 & 15 to EG on P5 to indicate the safety chain is OK. You should now see the green Estop OK LED light up. Run the test again with diocontinuous as the parameter. This will continuously display the state of the digital inputs on the screen, turn on SSR8 (the machine enable relay) and ripple a pattern through the rest of the SSRs. (You don't want the whole machine hooked up for this test!) If you have SSRs in the slots, LED 1 through LED7 will show that pattern. If you don't have the SSRs, you can put 510 to 1 K Ohm reistors in the two closest together socket pins for each of the SSRs, and then the LEDs will work.
Switches 1-4 should be off if you are using open-loop, where no encoder feedback is supplied to the controller. These switches should be on if you do have encoder feedback to the USC card.
Another test is the pos test, which continuously displays the bytes of all of the encoder counters. If you have encoders on the machine, you can manually move the motors and watch the numbers change.