restored from SRAM, but param are still messed up, issue with program protect sw

I have a robodrill with a 16imA control, I lost my params due to messing around with the mobo after I got a sysfail led. This turned out to be a psu that died in the ctrl cab behind the i/o board. so, new psu is in, and I loaded my sram in from a backup. well, it seems like its messed up. i get to the quick/nc screen and in there you can 'restore' parameters, etc. this sounds great, but the machine just keeps giving me the message to set the program protect key to the release position. this is the key sw on the ctrl panel. this switch isn't getting read by the machine as moving the sw has no effect. I have no way to exit the quick/nc screen either, and most functions inside those menus give the same message about the prog protect sw so I cannot view the params and many other things. I have no way to get out of the quick/nc screen to the normal screens where you can edit the parameters.

i have had issues with params in the past and at the time, i loaded by hand all the params into the ctrl from a paper copy. this paper copy didnt have nearly enough params on it, but after entering those, i was able to access the quick/nc screens and do a restore. I have tried this method, but this time doing it by hand does not get me into the quick/nc screen.

so, i'm stuck between this issue with the protect switch when loading sram from an sram card, and the manual entry method not getting me to where I need to be.

any experience with this out there? any idea how to get the machine to read the key sw? any idea how to get to a screen where i might read the key sw status from a ghost control (reset+delete) erased control?

The switch is probably handled through the pmc, which may not be in RUN state. Can you get to the pmc side?

there are two scenarios happening: 1.) restore from sram card, this allows access to quick/nc screen but it just keeps saying the change the protect switch, in this case, I cannot access the PMC at all. I cannot leave the quick/nc screens

2.) do a reset+delete and then the machine boots into no params mode and then I can type in parameters, pmc access is ok but its blank in there in this case. something that's troubling me is that in the past i had hand typed in params from this situation and that got me to a point where i could get to the quick/nc screens and then restore worked.

this is some kind of catch 22 situation where the sram backup looks like it mostly is working, but the stupid protect switch issue happens, and some how on the doing this more manually side of things I have not had luck.


I do have backups of my parameters, pmc parameters which were written to external sram card. my control seems to have no way to read that data back from the card! its crazy. I have been messing a little with trying to read params over rs232 from those separate backup files but i have not had any luck it just seems to write some digits into param no. 0, then it stops reading

i was able to load the parameters over rs232, this issue was that one of the parameters in my restore file changed the io device from rs232 to mem card, and that change instantly stopped the flow of data over rs232. by changing my params backup file to set the io in that file to rs232 i was able to load in the rest of the params. this got somewhere. i then set the keep relays, c-data, and d-data from my paper param sheet. after rebooting then i get to the quick/nc screen, and it says the same darn thing - set the prog protect key to release. maybe there is actually something wrong with the hardware that reads the prog protect key (some pcb's that are behind the control keyboards). or maybe i can figure out how to load the pmc params over rs232 prior to setting the c-data, and keep relays? this seems like a little progress, but something isn't right here. i dont understand why the prog protect switch isnt being read.

I did (probably stupidly) load a .LAD file in the two left buttons boot menu. this should be just fine, as i got the .LAD file from the same boot screen at an earlier time :) I don't yet have a good reason to believe that my sram card is bad or something like that. I can confirm that the ladder is not executing, if you go to the pmc screen it says 'stop' in the upper right corner. I do not have really any experience with the pmc or ladders. I'll be able to get back to the state where I have loaded the parameters, then i'll try to load the pmc parameters if i can. if you press some buttons around in the pmc screens i eventually get a cpu failure message after i press the 'status' button. im not sure what to make of that. how do you manually start the pmc? if indeed the prog protect sw is read there this is the way fwd. i should note also that none of the LED's turn on above any of the buttons on the control's keypad. i wonder if something is broken, and maybe that is why i cannot get into/out of the quick/nc screen by pressing that button? it doesn't add up yet though, as all the keys function just fine like the numbers and arrows, input key, page up and down buttons. both the dome switch type buttons on the front of the control work, and the physical buttons on the breakout 45 deg angled buttons - all those work. so hopefully its a matter of dealing the the pmc issues.

i have this to a point where i can load a ladder, and pmc parameters onto the machine, when I hit RUN on the pmc, i get a 975 bus error.

the pmc is not running, and i do suspect that the program protect key is sensed by the pmc.

the procedure so far is to reset+delete start the machine, then set the params for rs232, then load the parameters, this alarms with a 'please restart machine' but then you just re-start the parameter file data transmission and all the params will get read in.

after re-booting the machine comes up to the normal screen instead of the quick/nc screen (this must be one of the parameters i had set to make sure that it doesnt boot to the quick/nc screen). then you can go into the PMC screens.

in there you set 900.1 or on the setting page programmer enable, then this enables the RUN and I/O buttons on the PMC main page. my ladder is blank and there is an ER17 program parity error. I have found that in the I/O screen I can load the ladder and the PMC parameters from an SRAM card where it will read file 1, then file 2 by your choosing, I have only 2 files on the card right now which is the .LAD that i exported a while back, and the .PRM that I also exported a while back.

This reads in fine and the PMC params look correct according to the info that I have. then, if I hit RUN i get the 975 bus error black screen of death after about 1/2 a second.

also, upon restarting the machine, the ladder is gone from the PMC, but the parameters are still there. its pretty strange.

I cannot use the quick/nc button at the top of the keyboard still, maybe its on PMC too?

any thoughts?

additionally regarding the two (right hand) buttons IPL menu. i probably f* up when I read in the .LAD file from my sram card there. The .LAD that I have is one that I read from the PMC screens when the machine was working. I can load the ladder into the PMC screen but it wont run as mentioned I get the 975 error. There is an option to write to F-ROM inside the PMC screens. I decided to do this since the file that I have was generated by the PMC screens, and it might undo the f* up that I might have caused earlier.

after doing this, the machine won't boot, it just sits there and says 'not ready'

i then loaded the .LAD again in the IPL screen and get the same behavior as prior where there is no ladder in the PMC screen after doing this from IPL. I load the ladder into the PMC screen and hit run and get the 975 error.

i wonder if I messed up some hardware somewhere during this psu issue? i get the feeling that the procedure of loading the .LAD into PMC from the SRAM card and then storing that to F-ROM is the correct way to go, but then I get the 'not ready' issue.

I'm pretty certain after continued hours spent on this that the core mistake was loading a .LAD file in IPL mode from a .LAD file that was generated in the PMC screens when the machine was working. If you save PMC-RB data to an SRAM card from the IPL screen it makes a file called PMC-RB.000 instead. Something got overwritten in F-ROM is my guess by doing this the wrong way.

In the IPL screen you can 'check' the data and there are many types of data there to look at. Most show some kind of hex values that probably make sense. The values shown for my PMC-RB, P11M CAP, CEX 2.0M, PD1M CAP, MINFO, CEX0DATA, CEX1DATA files are jibberish characters though

anyone able to check their robodrill with 16iA in IPL mode to see if the characters are jibberish for the listed items in the 'check' screens?

I think i'll give fanuc america a call tomorrow, see if they can help me out

have tried a different motherboard but get the exact same behavior
have tried a different sram board just in case its messed up, but no its the same behavior

i have been on the phone with official support and they suggest that maybe the f-rom isnt messed up because the control would not read in a file that was wrong.. suggested that the .lad from the pmc screen is ok to load into the f-rom from the IPL screen

if I boot the machine and load params over serial the errors that I get are ER17 program parity and the ladder is missing in the pmc screen.

if I load my backed up ladder from sram card and then store that to f-rom using the pmc screen, the machine boots to 'not ready' and just sits there.

if I load my ladder from sram card and the ladder params (other machine params loaded already) i get 975 bus error.

it seems that the cpu is functioning or the control wouldnt work at all. the servo card has a green led on it, maybe that indicates the link is ok to the drives in the rear cab? the sram i mentioned i swapped, i tried a different mobo.... of course i have also gone over and over the connections to make sure i didnt miss or flub one of those based on photos prior to all this happening.

not sure what to try next. I think a f-rom backup might help. if anyone has a robodrill at14ia with 16ia control, and you have a 4mb sram card, are you willing to save out all the f-rom files that you can (i know some are write protect so those are a no go) and email the files to me? would be a huge help.

it was confirmed by someone with fanuc ladder iii that my ladder backup file is corrupt. if anyone that has a robodrill circa 1997-2002 with a 16iA control, I would really appreciate it if you could save out your ladder from the IPL screens to a PMC-RB.000 file and send it to me. it seems that after all the board swapping etc that the issue is my ladder file.

Pm me [email protected]

the machine is back up and running. it turned out that my backups were corrupt and I needed to get the ladder data in a file that was not corrupt. both my ladder and sram backups were corrupt. my advice is that go ahead and make these backups but maybe back it up several times and make sure the files are the same at the very least. if you can send your ladder to someone with fanuc ladder software to make sure your backup is not corrupted. as for everything else, you can punch it all out to files over rs232 so you should do all of it this way too. params, pitch, programs (dont forget 9000 type), offsets. the pmc parameters you need to do that using a card as far as i know but again maybe run that backup a couple times and make sure it isnt corrupted. then you can feel like you're ready for trouble.