[Steve@Reliance]

Now that this thing is hooked up, I can't get the thing to run. Machine manuals.net has a manual, but I don't know yet what it consists of. And I'm not sure which control it is I'm not an electronics guy so I don't really know where to start. The motherboard fan comes on but when I turn on the monitor, the little LED comes on for a second then goes out. The thing ran before it was moved. I have changed the input voltage from 480 to 208, and belive I have made all necessary changes. The spindle motor runs fine and all I don't know about the servos, but made all the changes as per the schematic in the panel and it didn't mention anything about them. Right now i just want the control to run. One of the boards fell out during transpot and it was installed in the slot in the motherboard I thought it should go in. someone has replaced the hard drive I think because it is just sitting against the side of the cabinet. The monitor and keyboard have been changed as well.

[machintek]

Typically, there is only one transformer that needs to be reconfigured, as it has multi secondary taps for the drives, 24V , etc. The spindle motor needs to be be rewired for 220 but the overloads and main fuses need to be changed out as the current will now be double.
The original machines did not have a hard drive. Once a hard drive was used, it was mounted in a carrier with rubber isolators. This did not work and vibration is what made them misread. Eventually Bridgeport had the hard drives suspended on springs.

Watch the floppy as soon as you turn the machine ON. If it comes on for a few seconds, the motherboard is at least working. If not, it may be a power supply issue, or a connector issue, or a bad motherboard. If you get to video but it does not boot, it may be a CMOS issue.
The original boards were the mother board with a video board, IO board and BMDC plugged into it.

George

[trubleshtr]

Any luck?? did you isolate the problem?

[Steve@Reliance]

Not yet. haven't had a chance to work on it for a couple days

[Steve@Reliance]

I have checked out the hard drive and it is fine. The motherboard fan comes on, the red and green LED's on the amplifiers are on, and the LED on the floppy drive comes on and stays on. The LED on the monitor comes on for a few seconds and goes out. I am getting 120 to the monitor still after it goes out. I was reading the manual and it says you need 72V +/-5v at wired 21 and 20. I was getting 150V so as the manual suggested I pulled from another tap to get 75V.

[machintek]

The 150 VAC scares me. Did you remember to change the inputs taps of the transformer?
The floppy LED usually stays on if the ribbon cable to it is reversed, or if there is a motherboard issue. Try stealing a speaker from an old PC and hooking it up to the speaker pins on the mother board. The beeps are a error code.

George

[NC Cams]

Try this:

With the cabinet door open and the power off and being very careful, pull the keyboard plug from the M/B and install a regular keyboard.

Then try to start the machine. While booting, hit F8 and then say NO to any question that looks like it is trying to boot any Extrak software (IE: eztrak, ezload, or any non-DOS type program).

If the PC and MB are OK, you should be able to get to a DOS prompt as in C:\. This at least tells you that you can access the HD, the M/B is not toasted and the monitor and monitor card are functioning. If any problems are found, they need to be fixed FIRST.

If you know how to used DOSSHELL and it is loaded, you could run it and then see what sort of software and such is loaded. If there are a lot of PGM's on the machine already, you may want to download them as they are part programs that might be taking up critical CACHE space for the look ahead function. You can also run SCANDISK and DEFRAG from this within DOSSHELL which will fix a lot of stuff off handed.

Once you have the PC side operational and straightened out, THEN try to reboot the machine. At least you'll know that any problems are NOT on the 'front end' of the machine.

Problems on the 'back end' (IE:BMDC card side of the machine) are a bit more technical in nature to solve.

NOTE: before I repowered the machine, I'd unplug the PC power supply so as not to toast it and make sure you have ALL the AC voltages properly valued.

Be sure to change the spindle motor overload current breaker as motor current will at least double if you go from 480 to 208 - the breaker won't take this sort of loading for long. Don't forget to rewire the motor spindle for 220vac as well. Mine had to be rewired EXTERNAL to the cabinet as the change had to be made within the motor.

Be sure to check the DC voltage buss too once you retap the transformers - look for about 100 to 110vdc.

[Steve@Reliance]

I have taken care of the motor rewire and MOL change, as well as changing the taps on the transformer. The ribbon cable to the floppyy drive is probably in backwards since it is to short and every time you open the door far enough it yanks it out of the motherboard. The original user interface had previously been removed for some reason and replaced with as standard keyboard and monitor. The jog etc. has been put in a small box. This all worked before we moved it. After getting the machine in place and opening the cabinrt, the tall bord that is on the right end of the motherbord had fallen out. It was reinstalled in the far right slot as it wouldn't go in the next one (there is a small metal bracket attached to the motherboard fan)

[NC Cams]

The real long board that fell out is PROBABLY the BMDC - this is the heart of the machine control system.

The plugs to it are VERY polarity sensitive and it DOES need to be fully seated to run properly. THe little bracket is designed to old the top of the BMDC in place so that vibration will not unseat it.

Due to vibration, you REALLY need/want to have all the cards bolted into place.

For cables, all the cables are standard 40 pin or 50 pin ribbon cables. You can get them premade to almost any length from Digikey ior Mouser. EMI has them too but at HUGE MULTIPLES of the Digikey/Mouster prices.

If the machine was disassembled prior to shipment and stuff has fallen out/shook loose, you really need to do a policing of the boards/cards and try to put them back in properly so the thing will boot. It doesn't take much in the way of a loose connection for the system not to boot.

[Steve@Reliance]

OK, after spending most of the weekend researching this thing I haven't gotten far. I spent several hours reading all of the EZ traz threads. There is over 700 bridgeport threads in this section.

This machine is an SXII but someone has added a hard drive. Does it still boot from the floppy drive? I can't make copies of the disk until I can at least get this thing to start up.

There is a problem with the video card I believe because if I just plug in the power cable the green LED on the monitor comes on and stays on but no display. if the signal cable is plugged in the LED turns orange for a second and I get a flicker but then the LED goes of and nothing. And it won't come on again for a couple minutes.

There are 2 LED's on the BMDC near the top. The upper one is dim and the lower one is bright.

The green and red LED's on the amplifiers are both on.

There is a switch on a cable on the power supply, jst laying in the cabinet. It looks like the same switch as on an old PC I have here, so I assume the power supply is changed as well. I have checked voltages to various plus and the power supply appears to work.

I just happened to have and old 133mhz pc. upstairs, (I never throw anything away) It has a motherboard with the ISA slots and looks basicly the same. There is also a video card and a brand new floppy drive in case I need them.

The guy that I get my computer stuff is coming in in the morning to take a look at it but he dosen't know anything about the industrial part of the system. I had taken him the harddrive to check and when he plugged it in the EZ Trak corrdinate screen came up on the monitor. I don't know what part of the software that relates to but what exactly is supposed to be on the floppy drive?

[NC Cams]

The following pertains to an Eztrak DX with PC and boot from HDD system assumption:

The PC side of the system is just that - a PC. The machines had a 386 or 486 (some a pentium) motherboard and a floppy/HDD drive card, a HDD, a floppy drive, a video card and a P/S from an AT hung from the side of the cabinet.

Yes, they probably installed a new P/S which is why the cord to P/S is still lying in the cabinet. That's what I did in lieu of hacking up the P/S just to eliminate the cable.

Into one of the ISA slots, BPT plugged in the 14" or so long BMDC card which interfaces the PC to the mill - this is the "industrial controller card" that does all the work. Two 50 pin ribbon cables exit this card and go to external BOB cards.

THe PC merely provides the interface between the BMDC and the opearator via typical "computer type" I/O's (keyboard, keys, switches et al). Conversely, the BMDC, via the external Break Out Boards (BOB's), links up with the external signal and control circuitry between/to the mill and servos, etc.

The PC side of the machine works just like a PC. In the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files, they automatically load the Extrak operating system instead of DOSSHELL or Windows or whatever you'd use for a computer O/S - the machine is, however, running on DOS but the only program you can use is essentially the EZTRAK one - until/unless you exit to DOS and run it like a regular PC.

IF you install a manual keyboard and press the F8 key while booting, you can bypass the autoloading of the Eztrak O/S and boot directly into DOS instead. Simply hit F8 when you turn on the machine and then say "no" to any question that involves AUTOLOAD, EZLOAD, EZTRAK, BMDC or anything that does NOT look like a generic DOS operating command.

If your computer guy is DOS literatate, he can EASILY do this for you. Just tell him it is a regular old 386/486 PC only installed in a real strange case.....

Once you get to DOS, it should be easy to check HDD access capability, floppy operation and the other stuff needed to verify if the PC "front end" is fully operational.
If that's OK and the HDD is not corrupted, you should be able to run SCANDISK (checks and fixes HDD issues if not too bad) and then DEFRAG (unscrambles files on HDD).

You may want to reload the Extrak O/S just to be sure (before you do, save the SYS.BEZ or SYSTEM.BEZ files to a floppy as this is all the "factory backlash comp" settings - you'll want to reload them after you reinstall the O/S)

Hopefully, you do have back-up disks for the machine - if not, you'll need to beg, borrow or steal some. Be sure you know which version of the Eztrak O/S you have as this can cause problems on early machines with Southwest controls and some CIB (computer in box) machines.

Now, if you can't boot from the HDD, chances are the HDD/FDD card is malfunctioning. first clean the contacts with soft eraser and replug it in annother ISA slot - try again. Make sure the ribbon cables are all properly seated and oriented - a slight misalignment will cause boot problems - chased that problem for 1.5 days.

In my case, a new HDD/FDD control card helped - for a while - but the M/B failed shortly thereafter. This is where your 133 table anchor will come in REAL handy. I'd swap it in its entirety.

Once you verify that the PC, monitor, et al are working, whatever issues are probably related to the BMDC or someplace else in the factory wiring. A copy of OEM schematic drawing 1943390 or 1942856 would be invaluable - they have ALL the PC based machine wiring diagrams you'll need to service any 2D or 2.5D version of the machine.

NOTE: If the EZTRAK coordinate system came up on the screen via your HDD bench test, your HDD thankfully is probably not the problem - that's what's supposed to happen.

I'd guess that you're problem is probably in the M/B, P/S (voltmeter check first), HDD-FDD controller and/or VGA card. My best bet would be problems with M/B or HDD-FDD card. Desk top style equipment works, but not forever in the dank, dirty, vibration plagued world of CNC machines.

Eventually, the stuff simply can't hack it anymore and starts to malfunction - especially as stuff ages beyond 5 years or more. If you're having boot problems (might be why you got the machine - the previous owner was scared off from fixing it), plan on doing a M/B retrofit and doing so soon.

[Steve@Reliance]

I have no backup files of any type for this machine.

[NC Cams]

When your DOS guy gets there, have him download a list of the files and dates for same that are on the C:\ drive. You do NOT need the ones with a .TXT or .PGM extension. You should move these files to an external disk to free up space on HDD. These are tool path files for work that the previous owner did - unless you know what they do or can read G/M code, they won't do you much if any good.

When you get the above list, find the date for the Eztrak.EXE file and advise.

While he's there, have your DOS guy create a bootable "system disk" for you. Once you have this, it is pretty easy to copy the backup files needed to reboot/reset-up the machine.

Check your e-mail and advise - the stuff you need should be there. If not, advise.

[Steve@Reliance]

Thanks for the files.

The guy was tied up yesterday so he couldn't make it but should be here today.