Hello All and thanks for reading - this is a doosey - better make a pot of coffee ! lol
The first post here is mostly history - my second post will be asking more direct questions for those who'd like to chime in for solutions -


My Client has a FANUC 160i-LA / with PC Control / Panel Mounted Display - it's offline right now due to the issues I'll describe in this thread, but suffice it to say - it's kind of a mess if you're looking in as a third party ..... Can't we all just get along ? We just want to get some work done over here ! - lol / col ( COL = Cry Out Loud )

Timeline (Prior to Service call) -

1. My client never backed up their HDD ( I'm the IT guy for their regular network etc.- of course I did ask them to do this many times over the last few months, but they were skiddish about it because they were told a lot of horror stories about the 'special ribbon cable' breaking etc. )
2. My client just purchased the Cincinnati CL6 - 90 days ago or so - they got a 30 day warranty from the seller.
3. The HDD started acting up a couple of weeks ago / bluescreen / checkdisk / etc.. but WindowsNT could boot occasionally -
4. The CNC side ( brought up by ncboot etc.. ) dropped out as of last Friday - As of last week and then the CNC side ( parameter data etc. ) went totally offline, and windows NT was acting strangely. The operator informed me when I arrived the unit wouldn't boot at all and he couldn't access the CNC side as of the afternoon before.

Response to Initial Service Call - " The HDD must be going bad ! "

1. I connected remotely and copied the WINNT C drive from another machine on the network to the server - most files were copied except the user profile .dat files in NT - which didn't surprise me. The other directory under the root of C:\ which copied that day was WinNTSetup
2. The following day I looked again through the network and several of the directories ( previously copied ) couldn't be seen on the HDD at the Fanuc controller.
3. I went onsite - took the HDD out of the console / put it into another PC and ran SPIN-RITE ( I didn't want it to boot )/ it checked out to be fine = 100% / no errors.
4. I used clonezilla to make a copy of the HDD onto another one I brought along.
5. Neither the Original nor the Clone would boot the machine. The bios was coming up but no HDD's could be identified by either using the AUTO-DETECT function in the Bios nor by hand coding the Sectors / Cylinders / etc into the bios -
6. We obtained a generic image for the machine from Cincinnati and I took the weekend to image 5 other HDD's in the hope we could get this thing up and running.
7. The next visit onsite resulted in the same results ( no HDD showing up ) and then the controller 'gave up the goods' as I called it by releasing some smoke around the power supply area when I turned it on during one of the HDD tests.

I have included a photo of the burned chips in the event anyone knows what they are - read on to hear what happened next.

FANUC SERVICE CALLED

1. FANUC sent a tech who removed the board and promptly exclaimed that someone must have plugged something in wrong to cause this damage - I know this not to be true, the operator and I took pictures every step of the way ( as this is not a regular PC ) and we labeled all the connections when things weren't completely clear - not to mention there are only a handful of connectors - 24 volt power was never touched - but how to prove this - as the Fanuc tech unplugged all the connectors before he removed the board for inspection. I happened to be there luckily and must say I am not happy with the FANUC TECH's initial declaration outloud - this made the business owner somewhat more upset as he is uncertain of what had really happened to cause the board to smoke.

2. FANUC Tech replaced the $3500.00 board and the saga continued.

NEW BOARD ISSUES -
The original board A02B-8100-0460-07E could not be requisitioned ( can't find one anywhere ) so FANUC installed a A02B-8100-0464-xxx

1. NCBOOT couldn't see any of the FRAM / SRAM / CNC stuff - so the tech upgraded the NCBOOT from 2.2 to 4.4 - Still no luck after 8 hours so far. ( including day 1 ) - then word from the FANUC main office - The CPU board needs to be replaced as well as the original CPU board won't match the new MainBoard. FANUC TECH reported - 'We'll be back tomorrow with the right part"

is anyone noticing the billable hours here ? and additional days out of production ? my client is beginning to cringe even more ?

2. New CPU Board = NCBOOT can now see some of the CNC stuff, but cannot LOAD anything - the FANUC TECH said he'd need to update the proprietary FANUC software since the MainBoard is a newer revision as well as the CPU board. Sounded simple enough !

by the way did I mention that there was no backup of the SRAM DATA !!!!! not on the HDD anywhere / nor the initial backups I did / nowhere !!!! - another cringe from my client once he understood this would be more time consuming to fix -

3. Now we are at the stage of being able to read the data in NCBOOOT - save allows the FANUC CARD ( intellectual Property card ) to be seen and verified and backup the 'generic' data on the SRAM card but ......

The LOAD function will not work - The FANUC card cannot be read during LOAD though it's being seen by SAVE ?!?!?
Here'e the weird anomaly:

The FANUC TECH had installed NEW SRAM thinking that there was a problem with the original SRAM - no luck there - LOAD still not working
Then he replaced the NEW SRAM with the OLD SRAM and got LOAD to function once - it verified the FANUC card and he reloaded a couple of Files that were removed during a SAVE - ( he said they moved them instead of just Saving them ?! ) I'm thinking the SRAM leeched out the memory and allowed the next LOAD step to function - hey it's WinNT and sometimes it's just not happy - right

(the original installer said sometimes you needed to just unplug & power down everything a bit to get the system to boot - it reminds me of having to clear the CMOS back in the old days to get certain machines to function under WInNT )

NEXT STEPS -
FANUC TECH installed a couple of files that we backed up using SAVE - then when trying to LOAD the ROM's he had received from the Main Office they errored out saying they were in an 'INCORRECT FILE FORMAT'
( This caused the FANUC TECH to become red as a beet and throw his book and pencil into the Laser Bed area )
He explained:
In the old days the ROM's were easy enough to load, but there was a change ( I assumed it had something to do with the Intellectual Property issues ) and now the onsite Tech's needed to have a Bootable USB key with them and the recompiling of the ROM's was done outside of Windows from the Bootable USB key - so today this wasn't going to happen, OMG another day out of production ?? Luckily he had the Main Office do the work - ( over a half hour later..... )

he unplugged the FANUC (IP) Card so he could use the PCMCIA SLOT to transfer files to the Controller from his PCMCIA / COMPACT FLASH card ( I did ask him to use the network instead , but he was fixed on doing it 'the right way' ) - Things locked up of course as WinNT didn't see the changeup of the cards and now we were back to square one - NO LOAD working, cannot see FANUC IP Card in LOAD and needing the new software to be installed otherwise no NCBOOT -

So here we are - almost 2 weeks missing from production - Gobs of hours spent in service time ( myself included ) and the FANUC TECH taking the lead with this scenario

NEW FRAM ? to be bought and loaded with the new Software at FANUC Offices then brought back Tuesday ( no one can do this over the weekend so they'll need the day monday to do it ) that way in the event that the PCMCIA card doesn;t work he'll be able to continue alsong

Install NEW FRAM Tuesday and proceed from there - He wants me to do the Parameter Data Load that Cincinnati said 'should be easy enough' though Maintenance mode in the Basic Operation Program ( BOP ) - FANUC TECH doesn't seem to want to do this.

This leaves us with a system that's still not backed up properly from the HDD perspective - but we will for sure do the sram backup - because the FANUC TECH is considering the PCMCIA SLOT to be the issue ( or it could be his card though that's never happened before according to him )

So there's the story I'm going to ask a few direct questions in my next posting but I guess I had to get some things off my chest and record for the record and share with everyone here -

In summary my rant here is to ask the emotionally based questions of:

holy crap !! how much do these guys get paid !!!! -

I realize it's an old system and I understand the woes of being a tech onsite but really ??

More direct questions to follow: