Need to connect pin problem

I am trying to connect pin 16 of my parport 0 to a SSR relay to turn on the driver board when I turn on the power putton so the driver board is not running all the time. I am not sure I can do it the way I am trying so I need help. This should be easy for you guys. What I have tried is
[ net machine.is-on => parport.0.pin-16-out ]
in the .hal file. Hal meter shows is false with power button on and off. Hal configuration shows , halui.machine.is-on, true and false when clicking the power button on and off. Thanks for any help. Carl

Sorry John but I don't understand your answer.
Reading the Basic HAL Tutorial gives me the empression that I can't assign a pin because I have a joypad using that signal.

"An OUT pin can be connected only if there are no other OUT or IO pins on the signal."

I have a button on the USB joypad used to turn the power button on.

Still lost , Carl

Here is my .hal file. I only have the one entry that I tried last.

Hi

halui.machine.is-on is an exported PIN from the halui module

Your entry

#This is the only line I left in after trying a few.
net halui.machine.is-on => parport.0.pin-16-out

is treating it as a SIGNAL, which is why it doesn't work

As John said earlier the syntax needs to be

net SIGNAL PIN [PIN....]

so net powered-up halui.machine.is-on => parport.0.pin-16-out

will create a signal called powered-up which other pins can link to if required and links parport.0.pin-16-out to the boolean halui.machine.is-on value.

I think of signals as pieces of bare wire that physically wrap between pins and connect them.
Another pin cannot connect to the same pins but it can connect to the bare wire and share the same signal.

Hope this analogy helps, once you have it straight in your head the whole thing falls into place.

regards

Working on understanding the code but I only have to do something like this about twice a year and know nothen about the code. I used the spindle connection I did last year as an example. That worked for me then. Will have to see if I can find other examples to copy and change for my use. Then I get a better understanding of the code. Thanks, Carl

Sorry, I was working on other stuff so I'll try it again tomorow. Carl

Still not able to get it to work. When I start the program Linuxcnc the relay does click on and off during the program startup so I know the relay is wired correctly This is what I tried.


net halui.machine.is-on => parport.0.pin-16-out
net machine.is-on halui.machine.is-on => parport.0.pin-16-out
#net powered-up halui.machine.is-on => parport.0.pin-16-out

I also tried # out net halui.machine.is-on => parport.0.pin-16-out
Using either John's or Arceye's didn't work for me. Carl