MC20 Stuck at "Initalizing Acro Loops"

I've got an MC-20 with a Centurion 6 control built in '96; the mill has been working properly until now- it will not boot past the "Initializing Acro-loops" message on the display. At the last shut-down, I had been adjusting the PPU setting for the X-axis in an attempt to decrease the error that I had on that axis (a previous owner had replaced the original ball screw with a metric ball screw, so the PPU had also been changed to match the new screw). I have adjusted this number before with no problems, and do not think I dumb-thumbed it this time, but just want to make sure I note this in case its relevant. After adjusting the PPU, I exited the Parms and entered HDW. As soon as I hit "HDW" the Z axis dove for the table at full rapid; I just barely hit the E-Stop before my Haimer hit the table! I could not remove the Haimer unless I raised the Z-axis a little bit, so I turned the rapids down to zero, crossed my fingers, and hit Reset. Everything worked normally this time, I was able to raise the Z-axis, and jog the X and Y axis' normally. I removed my indicator, and shut the machine down normally. The next boot attempt hung at "Initializing Acro loops", and has been stuck there ever since. I found a cheap used Acro Loop card on eBay from a supposedly working machine, and tried swapping cards (this is a single Acro loop card machine), but this made no difference, still hangs. I'm reading +5.08v, +12.47v, -11.88v on the power supply plug to the AcroLoop card. Any ideas?

What version of S/W is the Acroloop card using? i.e. DOS or Windows?
I don't have my Acroloop manuals anymore, but these were for older cards that ran DOS and Early Windows. IDE slot, not PCI.
You could run diagnostic and commands from the basic interface with these.
Al..

Hi Al, I'm assuming its DOS; at machine boot, "Booting from Simdisk, booting MS-DOS" displays. The control is running Centurion VI CNC version 6.107. I have not entered the DOS system, since I'm not very familiar with it and don't want to make anything worse- I wouldn't know what to look for in there anyway. I believe this machine is running an NCB card rather than acro-loop anyway, even though it still says initializing Acro Loop at boot.

For further info, the board I tried swapping was not the one with the backup battery that plugs into the motherboard. It was this one- Logic / Milltronics Board PC-IFD-01 Rev A _ PCIFD01 _ 6-07-033-003 _ LOGIC BD-57. For the price (~$80), I figured it was worth a shot.

Hi All. I got the control in for bench checks. It was a "very different" fault then I have seen. It turns out that there was a problem with the parameter files. reformatted the SRAM and loaded default files. Booted Ok. reload the customers file and " boo, hiss aw S**t" finally got a working set of parameters , OK.
Customer decided on a SBC update. 800MZ, 25MB ram, 256Mb parts storage, MUCH newer software. I think they will be surprised. adding my "Zip file " program so they can load about a 4.5Mb file from the floppy, and unzip directly in the control. BOOM. a 4.5Mb file on a 1.44MB floppy. ;-) Works for a lot of folks.

Got a 50Mb cad cam file to load?
Ask me about my full "hot swappable" USB (2GB) thumb drive. option. No floppy, no network issues, ( it "wernt" easy)

We got options.
Electro Mech Tech Services

sporttybob

Hi Bob, Looking forward to getting the updated control back, thanks for all your help!