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Triac and Mirac replacement Rack mounted cards
Posted: Tue 15 Aug , 2006 9:47 am
by bradders
I have replaced rack cards in my Triac and Mirac after the batteries on the initial ones corroded. Both machines are now getting the following messages when booting up.
Denford Fanuc Milling CNC Programming (V2.93) 9 Feb96
IBM RS232 Driver (RS232) 25 March 1992
COM 1 Installed
MACHINE Installed
IBM Desktop Program (FANUC V2) DRIVER (KDB) 12 Oct 93
IBM VGA DRIVER (CRT) 2nd June 1992
Initialising MINT 3.28
Boot up hangs up here
7 segment display is show a "L" with flashing dot = Limit switch open / Software not communicating
Any idea's would be appreciated
Posted: Tue 15 Aug , 2006 12:42 pm
by Denford Admin
Looks like an RS232 comms problem -
Check the obvious first (are the cables plugged back in properly
)
- they will have been disturbed, and soldered joints / wires may have come loose
Posted: Tue 15 Aug , 2006 13:38 pm
by bradders
You didn't say if the Triac was a PC/VMC or a Servo.
If it is a stepper machine then the battery isn't used and the card should still work even of the battery is faulty/disconnected/cut off! (yeh, I know it sounds weird, but the Baldor cards are multi-purpose and the Denford application doesn't use any of the battery backed ram features)
Re swapping chips, as long as the cards had the same crystal on them (16MHz) then the EPROM should be good on the new cards you shipped out - but if the crystal was different then it definitely wont work.
The L. on the LED display means things look good, but you would also get this if a 14MHz EPROM was placed in a 16MHz card, so make sure the old cards and the new cards were runing at the same clock speed (ie same speed crystal)
As you know the software error indicates the computer can't find the machine, so it all sounds like a typical RS232 port config problem. Perhaps try another computer, or if it's a Triac VMC then try an external computer connected to the MINT card (like a laptop or something).
And make sure they aren't trying to run from inside windows bacuase things like Microsoft ActiveSynch or other background software can grab the serial ports - have they installed other stuff since the machines last run?
Posted: Tue 15 Aug , 2006 15:15 pm
by bradders
Posted: Fri 18 Aug , 2006 22:39 pm
by Mr Magoo
NOTE:
Although the battery isn't used by the DOS based software, I think it may be used by the windows based s/ware.