Milltronics Partner 1; Dead after Extended Power Down Period

Hello All,

I would appreciate any help and/or recommendation on what to look for for the following problem:

Machine is Milltronics Partner 1, 1995 series J (SN 3409), factory refurbished, 10k spindle, LCD, 256 M flash memory etc. SN, 1995 vintage.

Machine has been used very little since installation in 2005. The last time it was used, worked fine; the machine has been sitting idle (unpowered) for 4-6 months. When turned on:

Absolutely no activity on the front panel controls other than the LCD backlight (no buttons lit, nothing functional, no display, no sign of servos powering up, etc).

The PC inside the back panel is running, the 5v and 12 v power LED's are lit, and a couple of other LED's on the boards. Fans are running, Inverter displays EF3, the LED's on the bank of relays flash once on power up. No sign of any lightening or other damage. There is a "beeping" approx 1 sec on/off coming from what sounds like the PC.

I've removed the PCB's and cleaned the contacts, cycled the DIP switches, replaced the 3v battery on the memory card--no effect.

Milltronics only suggested to start checking all the various power supply voltages.

If anyone has any suggestions or ideas, or knows of someone in the Raleigh NC area that could provide service, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
Charles

Try connecting an external crt computer monitor to the machine in place of the existing lcd. Then power the machine up. Do you then get video or is the screen still blank?

I dont know anything about Miltronics, but, most cnc manufactures technical help people are suppose to get any end users off the phone asap, and just Schedule a service call. You may have to try asking a local Miltronics dealer. Try to find out who sold the machine when it was new, and call them. They will try to help you over the phone, more than the factory will, because they want you to be a returning customer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by springlakecnc

I dont know anything about Miltronics, but, most cnc manufactures technical help people are suppose to get any end users off the phone asap, and just Schedule a service call. You may have to try asking a local Miltronics dealer. Try to find out who sold the machine when it was new, and call them. They will try to help you over the phone, more than the factory will, because they want you to be a returning customer.

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Springlakecnc,
It is not Milltronics policy to get people off the phone as soon as possible. We try to help the end user, whomever they may be, to resolve the issue that they are having. Please do not include Milltronics in the group of manufactuers that do not help their customers. We strive on having the best customer service possible. Thank you for your understanding.

I totally agree with what jpawelk said, every time I have ever called Milltronics for help they have always spent the time to help me with whatever problems or questions I've had. I called them this morning with a technical question.

Mark Hockett

Thanks everyone for the input.

I have not tried to plug in another monitor yet. I assume this uses a standard VGA cable that may be plugged into the PC? I was looking at the schematics and it's not clear what the video input is..

The Milltronics technical help has been fine. I certainly can't fault them for not being able to help much with not much diagnosis and no display, plus I didn't purchase the machine directly from the factory.

It's not too logical, but i guess possible, that something would happen to the display cable/connectors sitting idle (the display does flash up "no video input" or the like, when power is first turned on, then only the backlight). If it was just the display, you would also think that some other normal boot-up activity would take place. The 5v and 12 v LED's in the PC are lit, fans on, and a couple of other green LED's on the boards, otherwise, no signs of any activity such as floppy seeking, normal beeps, servos energized, no front panel buttons lit...

I'll keep chipping away on it, and THANKYOU for your time and input.
Charles

The video is VGA on your machine. Gain access to the rear of the front panel and unplug the existing monitor. Then connect the external to the vga connector and power the machine up.

What I'd look into first.....

Check if CMOS setting may be gone, which can lead to no hard drive recognition. Replace the CMOS battery if Lithium which are not recharged on the board like the NiCad's were. Common problem with dormant PC based controls. This can also effect the LCD/crt type if by default the motherboard won't support it. No sync/no signal! LCD's can be quite a bit more fussy with VGA inputs than the older multisync analog CRT's.

If it doesn't continue the boot process from the CMOS bios, it won't hand control over to the MB to read off the drive or know there is even a drive there to look at. Until then it is dumb as a stump, happy doing nothing.... while you scratch you head wondering/guessing/lost in what could be wrong.

DC

Hi Charles,

I started to say battery, but you already replaced that. We had this almsot exact thing happen and it turned out to be the mother board!

Are you not getting good service from them? And also what area are you in? ( Southeast, etc. ) I have a really good contact for milltronics in the South east. I am not huge fan of Milltronics, but they do do a pretty good job. The control is pretty user friendly. The one I mentioned above was barely 1 year old when the mother board crapped out, but I advised the shop it was in on multiple occassions that it needed to be away from the welding department and I have my opinion that it aided in its demise.

Gentlemen,
Thanks again for your input and help:

JP, I did take the front panel off and plug in a separate VGA monitor--no activity still.

CNC and DC, this machine has an "upgraded" PC has a 256 meg flash drive, and floppy, no hard drive. The flash mem is on a board that plugs into the backplane. I replaced the 3v lithium battery on this board. But after your comment, it occurred that perhaps there is ANOTHER battery on the motherboard for the CMOS memory....? The motherboard is two boards stacked, and I didn't see a battery visible, but can only see the top side. Shouldn't you get some sort of boot sequence even with a bad CMOS battery. It would be sort of odd that the motherboard would fail after sitting unpowered (and the main disconnect turned off), so do know if I should look for another battery on the motherboard? Although this pc was upgraded, I suppose the motherboard could be original--looks like pretty old chip packages.

CNC, I may want your contact info if I don't get this solved quickly--thank you.

Recapping:
>The 5 and 12 volt red LEDs are lighted on the pc backplane, and on the motherboard the top green LED, and the one in the very corner.
>The PC immediately starts beeping (approx 1 sec intervals) when power is turned on.
>The relay boards flash the green led's when power is applied initially.
>We purchased this machine refurbished about 3 years ago (I believe its 1995 vintage) from a company run by someone I believe that worked for Milltronics--I get no response to my calls or emails to this person.
>The machine worked fine last time it was powered on--a few months ago...

MANY thanks for your help and consideration,
Charles

You will need to resolve the beeping issue first, before you can even look into the CMOS settings. The MB beeping is usually a good indicator that it ails from something on the board or connected to it. The MB bios is what begins the boot process from a cold start to initialize peripheral I/O etc. Corrupt bios or failed board components won't let it get near IDE booting condition.

As a SWAG, setting idle unpowered isn't a problem until you need to use it again. Unfortunately, powering it up and finding shorted capacitors and extended periods without enough heat to bake off moisture absorption in some semiconductors seems to kill them early. Thermal expansion swings/cycles to boards and components also contribute. On those terms, leaving it on with shorter off cycles is often less harmful. Hibernating controls would be fine, if you never powered it up again, there wouldn't be a problem? LOL!

I am not familiar with the upgrade/flash drive type of hardware much. Although the CMOS setting should still recognize it as a viable drive like our Centroid(AKA Hemroid) Lathe control.

No BIOS/CMOS, no way to set the initial display or change the boot sequence to boot a floppy command prompt DOS system disk.

Good luck, JP should keep you in good hands!

DC

If you are not getting video from the VGA cable, try connecting the external monitor directly to the motherboard that is found in the control box. (on your machine this is the black box with the american flag on the front cover) If you do not get video from this location, I would say that the motherboard has failed. When and who did the control upgrade? My records show that you are still running off a sim disk. It may be possible that my reocrds did not get updated. If you would like, please call me directly. My number is 952.442.1401. Thank you

Jason Pawelk

JP, I have a similar situation, a long spell before firing up. We've replaced transistors on the lathe (ML-14 mid-90's machine), and a good motherboard installed. I still can't home, and getting a e-stop error. We also rebuilt the CPU in the Partner IV (80's) mill with a new MB700 5 ISA-slot motherboard, but haven't fired it up to check it out yet. It's good to know there's someone who may be able to help. My friend is the compuer guy. I'm not that literate in these matters, I just want to use the 2 machines. I have another thread concerning the issues we've encountered.
Here
Thx!

Hello Gentlemen,
Jason and Kurts and all, thanks again for your time and response and sorry for the delay in replying.
Jason, I definintely think it is either the motherboard, (or one of the interface boards in the PC box--if they can cause the PC to refuse to boot). I've plugged the PC directly into 120v, and attached a display directly to the pc--immediately starts beeping upon application of power, does not appear to be going thru any POST at all. It appears that the motherboard and backplane are new, the other interface cards appear to be original(?). Could some problem with the interface cards prevent *any* bootup sequence from occuring in the pc (assuming the power supply voltages are correct)?. If the actual motherboard is bad, I assume you would need to replace it, and have the control software and machine parameters to reload(?).

Jason, I tried to call you today; Milltronics recommended that I send in the entire PC box, but I did not get any information on the cost for this. Do you think this is the appropriate path to fix the machine, and what would be an approximate cost.

Thanks again everyone for your time and help.
Charles

For a bit of investigation.

Have you tried to connect your LCD to another PC's VGA port? Laptop with an extention cable may be enough.

During booting, Don't know what else you have tried, but you could try pressing the delete key, or with some MB's the F1 key to see if it will go into the CMOS setup. Might be a good idea to try this with the interface boards removed too, so you are only working with the basic PC. If you can get into the CMOS settings, then have it do an auto detect of the HD settings to find the flash ram attributes. If it sees the Flash Ram, then you could try and boot using the F8 to step through the boot sequence. Although normally you should see the BIOS display or something prior to loading from a mass storage device. Just don't let it go through the complete Autoexec.bat file to start up the GUI software if the boards are removed.

This being flash ram and no hard drive. I'd consider using a laptop with a PCMCIA adapter to at least look at the flash ram to see if anything remains on it. If it is empty then you might be able to reload it while in the laptop, then try it on the machine.



DC

DC,
Thank you. I havent hooked up any external keyboard, but I'm pretty sure that it is not going through ANY bootup or post (starts beeping immediately). I've hooked up an external display (absolutely no activity at all when the pc is powered --not a blip, flash, or anything). So, it won't get to any cmos settings. I would think it would at least have some activity even if there is no data on the flash drive (?). I've replaced the battery on the motherboard also. Thanks for the input and help, Charles

Quote:

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Originally Posted by xxcar2

Hello Gentlemen,
Jason and Kurts and all, thanks again for your time and response and sorry for the delay in replying.
Jason, I definintely think it is either the motherboard, (or one of the interface boards in the PC box--if they can cause the PC to refuse to boot). I've plugged the PC directly into 120v, and attached a display directly to the pc--immediately starts beeping upon application of power, does not appear to be going thru any POST at all. It appears that the motherboard and backplane are new, the other interface cards appear to be original(?). Could some problem with the interface cards prevent *any* bootup sequence from occuring in the pc (assuming the power supply voltages are correct)?. If the actual motherboard is bad, I assume you would need to replace it, and have the control software and machine parameters to reload(?).

Jason, I tried to call you today; Milltronics recommended that I send in the entire PC box, but I did not get any information on the cost for this. Do you think this is the appropriate path to fix the machine, and what would be an approximate cost.

Thanks again everyone for your time and help.
Charles

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Charles,
Send the control in. We will take a look at it and review what needs repair. The most it will cost you is 1600 dollars, and that would be a full control upgrade. This will replace all the parts in the box and give you the latest software version as well. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Thank you.

jason

Jason,
Thanks for the reply and help. That sounds very reasonable.
Thanks again everyone for your time and help.
Charles