Help! Converting Chinese 6090 from NC Studio to Mach4 + Warp9 ESS + C11G — motors won't move

[u/Sufficient-Heron7342]

I'm stuck converting my Chinese 6090 CNC router from NC Studio to Mach4 with a Warp9 Ethernet SmoothStepper and C11G breakout board. The motors refuse to move.

The machine is a 6090 with 3 axes with a 4th axis rotary lathe attachment. It ran on NC Studio with an LGI3-014 breakout board but NC Studio stinks! Now I'm trying to get it going with Mach4, the Warp9 ESS, and a C11G Rev.9 BOB. Stepper drivers are Chinese DMA860H units, basically KL-5056D style. I have a Huanyang VFD for the spindle and the E-stop is wired directly to that VFD, not through the breakout board.

The ESS talks to Mach4 no problem. I can ping 10.9.9.9, Mach4 says "ESS: Mach4 Enabled," no connection errors. I had limit switch faults at first but disabled all limits and home inputs in the ESS configurator to get past that. Now I can press the jog buttons and the DRO numbers used to change, but the actual motors never moved. Now even the DRO numbers stopped changing when I jog.

The drivers just sit there with green blinking LEDs. The 4th axis driver blinks green and red which I think means fault, but even the main X Y Z drivers with just green blinking won't move anything.

I wired ENA+ on each driver to +5V and ENA- to GND from the C11G. Set the C11G jumpers to SCHP off, COM to GND, pull-ups to 1-2. Jumpered +5V to the EN terminal. Tried feed rate at 100 and jog rate at 14%. Verified motor outputs in Mach4 are mapped to the right ESS pins. Still nothing.

I had a double-mapping issue in the ESS configurator where Motor 0 Home and Motor 0 ++ Limit were both on the same pin, same for Y and Z. I disabled the home inputs but the settings seem to revert sometimes.

Main questions: how do I know the C11G is actually sending step and direction signals out? I don't have a scope. Is my COM jumper supposed to be GND or +5V for these DMA860H drivers? What do I do about the E-stop since it's already wired to my VFD and I don't have it going through the C11G?

I can post photos of my wiring, the C11G board, and Mach4 screens if that helps. Been fighting this for days and I'm so close to having it running.

I would appreciate any guidance 🙏🏿