OLD system P-G Mark II floppy disk failure tip... for any others into antiques :)

been fighting my pig off and on with failing disc drives for a while, today figured out whats wrong...the 30 year old discs and the drives themselves are fine- except one little tiny issue. if you have a failing 3.5" YE-DATA brand drive, bust a neodymium magnet and take a tiny sliver and stick it next to the little projecting magnet on the rim of the drive motor. all my drives, that little magnet was weakened by time, the hall device couldnt read RPM and drives were overspeeding to 400-465 rpm instead of the exact 360 rpm required...stuck that little tiny bit of a magnet to the motor rim, it reads 360 rpm dead steady, all my old/previously unreadable discs work again (except a few i tried to write to when drives were too fast).
have a nalbantov usb adapter thats still not able to be used yet, but they are working on it and assure me it will work- cant wait to pitch the floppies finally- we still use a lot of old zero-A controls and when something needs added, the pig is the only way...theres been times it sat for years put away, but when we need it, we need it...this one died, got out the spare that I knew had 2 good drives last time used- exact same issue...gauss meter showed 1 gauss on one 1999 year drive that still kinda worked intermittently, barely anything on all the others...

anyways, hadnt been in here in a long while- but found this weird little issue, thought I'd share...all because one disc I had made a rubbing noise, and by ear I could hear rpm was off when put in various drives. funny too as years back, had read somewhere about these being 300 rpm- nope, not on a PG MKII, they run exactly 360...till the lil magnet goes dead :)

We threw our PIG into a vault and only bring it out for 10-11-12 controls along with the Black Box for 6 controls. We use Dos based Fapt ladder for 0A and up.
The PIG was just getting to touchy to risk using it for controls that FAPT supported. That said, finding a "running" DOS or even an XP with DOS shell lap top with functioning serial ports is getting as hard as keeping the PIG up.

Im looking for a System P just because of how cool they are, i want to try to keep this old stuff going, I saw you said a DOS based fapt ladder for 0A and up??, i was under the impression you could not do 011 and 012 PMC's on the DOS version, the 2764 roms that is.

Only the first FAPT LADDER on a PG could do those roms.

Last night i gave a fighting effort for my 0A roms to read on the DOS version, but no luck.

I think you can only do B,C,D on there.

Also, for what its worth, I think you should back up the all floppy disks for the PG's, I presume you can use a diskette reader on a standard PC and use something like POWER-ISO to copy the disk image, that is how I installed FAPT LADDER on my PC.

As time goes by the diskettes will die : (, and as usual fanuc wont support us.

Today was a good day- great day actually- we now have a USB emulator working on the old P-G MkII...whew... still one kinda minor issue with drive addressing- it tries to read floppy/emulator both as drive 0, and jumper/switch settings on drive/emulator wont affect it...but removing the disk/unplugging the 5v emulator power allows one or the other to function, then plug back in / remove disk to save stuff to the emulator...they are still tweaking the configuration, sure this can be remedied also- will be easier to REMOVE (pig for 'copy') files from drive 1 to drive 0... soon the floppy can be removed forever, sayonara.
anyways, Nalbantov emulator does work with different config file- theyve been really helpful and diligent at getting this going- had to snail mail floppy disks to Bulgaria, but they sorted it out :)
one little USB stick replaces a drawer full of old diskettes...funny, looking at the oldest file I had,32 years next week since I first used it...man, I'm getting old... these PG units were as robust as they are heavy LOL.
Anyways I'm happy as a lark today- the failing floppies have been a pain in my butt for several years now, a few weeks ago when i discovered the backup pig also had both its drives fail while in storage, I was stressing out- we still have to have this thing on occasion...now we have a way to backup images and read them back in without the worn out disk drives... they definitely served well, but way past time for them to become museum displays only LOL...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Max-Eley

Im looking for a System P just because of how cool they are, i want to try to keep this old stuff going, I saw you said a DOS based fapt ladder for 0A and up??, i was under the impression you could not do 011 and 012 PMC's on the DOS version, the 2764 roms that is.

Only the first FAPT LADDER on a PG could do those roms.

Last night i gave a fighting effort for my 0A roms to read on the DOS version, but no luck.

I think you can only do B,C,D on there.

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Max,
its possible there was a 'data' disk for zero-A, but ive never seen one...always stuck with the pig for O-A mods... as far as I know, the zero-A wasnt supported in the USA at least, on the MkII. I also have a PG color and a Mate, only use the mate for 15A as my MkII 15A disks bit the dust years ago

for me, worse yet, back when I first got ours I SAVED the data files for pmc/os, /os2,/os3 on the original disks, permanently merging them DOH! I've always wondered what all software existed for these at fanuc, as I believe they actually used these for developing base CNC and drive firmware...software likely forever lost to time now, not that it would be of any use to anyone...
woulda been neat to see though- Japanese software was always very efficient- Fapt Ladder or the panasonic/aromat 'fpwin' stuff was super fast and easy...I really hate the newer stuff, for a maintenance guy, it gets too klunky to read with the various formats used... we had a seimens step7 thing years ago, I hated that thing...coded in 7 different formats, just because they could... 'I fear change" LOL

Tim