OK looks as though I'm making progress (well sort of!)
I hooked up LED's to my port as per Chris's suggested and sure enough I
can make the LEDs light using the IO_Exercise script. I then tried
to run EMC and after overriding the estop etc it locked up and rebooted the
PC. I rechecked the INI file using the examples given in the handbook to
overide the limit switches etc and tried rerunning EMC and this time it
just locked the PC without rebooting. The lockup occurs when I try and use the
arrow keys to jog the motors.
I'm going to recheck the archive in the morning to see if this is a known
issue.
thanks Phil