Cen 6 upgrade question RE Simdisk ><Sold State hard drive

New to the form so forgive me if this question has been posted before. I have looked and done what was stated. Heres the scoop.

Bought a used vmc16 and found out the sim card with the software was dead due to dead battery.

managed to get the computer to load the shell and reloaded the software parameters to the computer.

Decided the heck with this and opted to load the software on to a solid state disk on model.
The disk on model herein after refered to as ssd (solid state disk drive was 4 gigs and seeing as dos 622 has a limit of 2 gigs i used fdisk to make 2 gig partition.

I read the post on setting up the milltronics with a hard disk and did the three things it told me ! set dip switch 1 to open to elimiate the simdisk. I removed J1 and removed the socket-ed chip.

I cant put the SSD in the pimary IDE slot because the SSD is slightly larger then the original IDE cable that one would normally use.
Problem 2 is that I am unsure if the boot sequwnce will look at the second IDE or if the Shuttle Hot 433 board will read a drive that is more the 520 megs. Although I did get the bios to allow me to naviage to auto detect IDE once (tab key) now it seems to have a stupid arrow on it and will not allow me to navigate over to that area which is grayed out. The Bios is American Megatrends ami bios c 1994 (433aus33) umx880 for 486 PCI.

I called American Megatrends to see how to reset this Bios back to (use without a mouse) and they do not know how to do it but to acknowledge it is bios that they made and licensed

So with Dip-switch 1 changed the computer no longer wants to load stuff from the simdisk but it also sees the second hard drive (secondary hard drive) but does not attempt to load it.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you
Stan

Why don't you just send the simdisk card back to Milltronics service to have the battery replaced? They will replace the battery, reload the original parameter files, and test it.

Otherwise, you will have to find a way to get a device that the CMOS will recognize to boot from before you can load and configure the control software.

Stan,
I wish I could help you with the hard drive update, but I havnt gone there yet. My Cen 6 Bios real time clock is going dead, but I do not know how to navigate the Bios settings to record them before replacing the Dallas component. Can you tell me how you did it or what the Bios settings should be?
Thank You,
BKBridges

What I did to get the data off the simidsk was to let the unit load and when it first powers up it tells you to press N to boot to dos.
Once in dos I had three 1.44 floppies already formatted and copied each of the directories from drive A to each disk.
Milltronics does a drive swap so drive A is the ROM memory of the simdisk B is the Ram directory where you store machine parameters and your nc files and C is your Floppy disk

Then I took the three disks and loaded them in to a directory on another computer (working computer) and made the structure the same as it was on drive A of the simdisk.
Then used the dos EDIT command to edit the paths.
replacing the A and B with C

Next I took a dos 6.22 boot disk and booted the working computer via drive A with the solid state disk installed in the primary IDE slot
Now using fdisk partitioned the drive so I would have C and D at 2 Gigs each..Dos 622 has a two gig limit so C will become my new hard disk and I can do away with this simdisk issue once and for all.

Next format the newly partitioned solid state drive with the command format c:/s
Reboot the working computer to see if it will load from the solid state hard disk into a dos prompt, if so then,
Copy the contents from the three disks made earlier of the simdisk to the new solid state hard drive.

I also learned that on the PCI card which is plugged in to the computer dip switch 1 can be switched to enable or disable the boot from simdisk and I have tested it to get the cnc to boot from a floppy.
So I now have a way to select if I want the cnc to use the simdisk or to use the conventional hard disk which in my case is solid state

I tried to use a newer mouse with an adapter to navigate around in the CMOS but it didnt work.
I also located an older mouse which should work with the cnc without an adapter. The adapters that are made to allow older computers to use newer mice do not always work.

In the alternative I had located the manual for the motherboard in the cnc machine which in my case was a shuttle hot 433.
I was able to locate this by doing a search for the bios ID string which comes up when you first turn the computer on before it loads the operating system.
By review the manual for the board in the computer I was able to see which pins could be shorted to reset the CMOS back to default which is to operate without a mouse. I have yet to test the older mouse or the reset for the bios but will report back which option worked.

Once I figure this whole process out I will be more then happy to post and or help others.
Regards
Stan

I have tried the new (old type) mouse connected to the card cage and the mouse didnt work on com 1 or com 2 so I disconnected the wire going to the plug at the bottom of the card cage and the mouse worked.
With that done i could go over to the auto detect ide function and it will detect the type of hard disk but still will not accept the solid state ide disk.

With that not working correctly I pulled a 3.2 gig hard drive from a working computer and had the milltronics machine load windows 98. This proved that the bios had the ability to load hard disks that where more then 528 megs which in the old days was the limit to what a bios could read.

With that done I took the 3.2 gig drive and connected it to the working computer and used dos fdisk to set up a 2 gig primary partition and then attempted to format the drive but the drive had errors and was junk.

I then took and IDE to SATA adapter and tried to use the working computer to fdisk the sata drive but the adapter doesnt work right. I have since found out from others on the net that these adapters are not much use.
So at this point I am looking for a sold state or conventional IDE hard disk.

Stan, I used this style on my partner 1E old 486 Award bios motherboard, before I built my own backplane single board computer upgrade. You have to find the # cylinders and heads on the ide cf card to set up a user defined hard disk if your bios allows that. I used a transcend model and found that info on their spec pages on their website.

Newdisk 512MB Dom Disk on Module Industrial IDE Flash Mmeory 40pins | eBay

Ron

I did that and I got the auto-detect thing to work however the board does not seem to want to boot from a hard disk regardless of what hard disk I install (yes I change the parameters to matach) Therefore Rl49 what motherboard did you replace it with. I have some older towers around here I could take the board from but they have soldered on connectors and alike which the main board in the cnc does not have. I would also like to have the ability to use a USB stick. Therefore I am thinking I will need a board that has at least 1 ISA slot so the one card can work as well as a PCI for the vid card and USB on the main board. The next issue will be to get the USB to work because DOS as a general rule does not accept USB. I am told it is possible however with special drivers.

Thanks for the help.
Regards
Stan

The Dallas RTC chips do not unsolder and resolder well at all. I don't bother trying any more.

PM me for more info on control updates.

Sportybob