[Coolbreeze22]

Bridgeport EZ Trak Series II DX
I have to have a system disk in the floopy drive to make it to the A:\ prompt. And I don't know what I need to do to get this machine functional.

I can make changes in the Bios and Reboot and the settings will remain, but I have tried different settings and still get the same result, no floppy I get need system disk, with floppy I get to the A:\ prompt.

I have a DiskOnChip 2000 on the motherboard. When I boot the machine, on the CRT "TrueFFSBios V 3.3.37 DiskOnChip Loader 2000 (v1.10) is displayed and then it goes threw somethings and then to the A:\ (prompt which on the disk I have MSDos.)

Need some direction, don't know if I have incorrect Bios Settings, DiskOnChip is bad or ? Does anybody have any ideas, I have a machine down.

[D-Money]

When you're at the A:\ prompt, what does the system say if you type "C:" ?

[Coolbreeze22]

no specific drive or something like that, basically C: is not initiated. Thats what I'm wondering how to do to initiate the C:

[D-Money]

On the BIOS screen, is the Hard Drive set to type: NONE ??

[Coolbreeze22]

it doesn't show a hard drive under Floppy A and Floppy B, if you are talking about system parameters
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/bridge...m_problem.html
if you go to this thread and at the bottom there are some pics. On the second pic all I have is Drive A:\ 1.44, etc... and none in the HDD section

[D-Money]

Have you tried setting the Primary Master to "Auto" just to see if it works?

Wasn't there any documentation included with the DOM?

[Coolbreeze22]

yes I have tried that, and no luck, no documentation with the DOM

[D-Money]

Is the DOM one of the "pre-loaded" modules from EMI, or one from another vendor?

[Coolbreeze22]

I don't know, but it has a DiskOnChip 2000, and if you give me your e-mail I can e-mail some pictures of the board and unit

[dreammstr6]

I have never seen one of the disk on chip modules before but a quick search yielded some good info. the driver for the disk on chip 2000 is built in and should have showed up as drive letter c. if c is not available from what i read looks like the disk on chip has died. it is old school technology no longer produced. if you do get it to show up according to the pdf you just load it like a regular drive.

[D-Money]

Thanks for the e-mailed pics.

Oh, it's one of those backplane deals. Cool! I haven't seen one of those in AGES.

Since it does, in fact, give you the TrueFFS BIOS loader message, that's a good sign that your DOM might actually be ALIVE.

If it is alive, it might just be completely blank and unformatted, which is why it doesn't show up as C:.

Do you have any of the TrueFFS utility software (such as DFORMAT and DINFO)?

I don't know if standard DOS utilities such as FDISK and FORMAT would work on an FFS-based module.

[dreammstr6]

very true d-money. the question is why did it lose it's partition. i figure it's dieing of old age. but could be wrong. you can find the utilities at the following link just scroll down to disk on chip DigiPoS Support - Drivers & Utilities maybe it will help.

[D-Money]

the question is why did it lose it's partition.

My question: Did it ever have a partition to begin with?

Was this a system that was fully functional last week, or is this DOM replacing a faulty component?

[dreammstr6]

very true d-money. the way i read the posts i took it as the machine died and trying to repair. and since that module has been obsolete a few years and the new ones came formatted my hunch was death but who knows. maybe he can use the utilities to figure out if it will function. if it does and it did crash originally i wouldn't trust it. but that's my 2 cents. one of my mills has the dom that hooks to the ide port the other a hard drive.

[D-Money]

Yep. Just because "flash" type memory modules don't have any moving parts, that doesn't mean they're immune to wearing out.

[dreammstr6]

exactly. and i don't like the thought of having a special isa or pci card to have to boot from. sounds like extra money to me. old hard drives are cheap. the disk on a module option is rather nice but there again not sure on life span. the disk on chip specs shows 10-15 year or so many write cycles. i'm thinking of trying a compact flash to ide adapter on one of my mills. just haven't got around to it yet. still rewiring the lectrical cabinet on the 3 axis machine.

[Coolbreeze22]

We bought this from an auction house, I believe, and some og our guys went down and verified evrything moved on it, even the jog. Once it was shipped up to our plant, I couldn't get the screen to boot to anything, and then the disk that came with it had a bad sector on it and now it will not read. I will try the utilities and let you know the turn out.

[Coolbreeze22]

It WORKED!!!! The utilities got me over the A:\ hump. Now I loaded the EZ Trak v6 software from the A:\ and I can get to the EZ Trak startup screen. Up in the top left corner I get BMDC--XX countdown, then "POSSIBLE POINTER ERROR" and SYS.DAT not opened and then "GP FAULT - FATAL ERROR, SOFTWARE WILL TRY TO EXIT TO CLEAR ERROR". If I hit Y or N the system will reboot and it will do it all over again, load from the A:, go to EZ Trak startup screen, etc... What do I need to do know? We have almost got this solved.

[D-Money]

Interesting thread here: http://www.cnczone.com/forums/bridge..._fault%94.html

[Coolbreeze22]

now I'm getting Error setting Paramter 1, how do I get to parameters screen? and why do I have to have the disk still in floppy to boot up to eztrak screen?