[Alley-Way]

My Dad has a Bridgeport Torq-cut 22. Recently, Each time he starts the machine he has to re-enter the parameters for the Hard drive. Cylinders, heads, sectors, and so-on. Does anyone have an idea why the BIOS keeps forgetting what kind of hard drive it has? How do I fix it?
Thanks!

[broby]

You might have a dead motherboard battery.
It is the small flat circular coin sized battery on the mother board.
If this is flat, then all BIOS settings will be lost each time the computer is turned off.
Replace that and set you BIOS and see if that helps.

[machintek]

Unless he has the original style mother board where the CMOS battery is a NI_CAD soldered to the mother board (I have replaced many), or he can have a early replacement half size all-in-one type where the battery is part of the DALLAS REAL TIME CLOCK IC.
When a machine gets this old, what is inside of the control that is original minimizes to the BMDC/PWMNT, AUF and LCTLAUF, and the BOB boards.

George

[tpmx57]

This seems to be something all of us with this machine goes through sometime or other.
Does your self a favor and back up your harddrive.
You can run a makedisk from dos to make a backup disc of your machines
parameters.
It will make a copy of bmdcprms.sys file that you will need when the hardrive does crash.
Get a copy of this file and keep it safe.
I have several motherboards that I picked up from Ebay just to have when needed.
I have a TC-22 down now because I dont yet have a backup to suit my mill.
these mills are great when running but this problem will shut it down .
Not hard to replace the motherboard or harddrive and get back up running when you have your backups.
Take the time now to do this ,youll be glad you did.

[Alley-Way]

So; I want to make sure I’ve got this right... The TC-22 came with a possible 2 types of motherboards... One (If I’m lucky) I can replace the battery and the other I have to replace the whole motherboard? Correct? Which leads me to – where do I get a replacement battery? And/or can any old motherboard with ISA slots work? While I’m on the subject of replacing and upgrading my Dad’s TC-22; will any IDE hard drive work as well?
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[Alley-Way]

Here are some pictures to hopefully help identify what motherboard my Dad has...
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[machintek]

Wow. Original mother board.
Near where the keyboard plugs in is a CMOS battery. It is a heat shrink tube usually blue, green or brown and has ridges in it because it covers 3 Ni-Cad button cells welded together. It is soldered to the mother board. It is usually 1/2 inch in diameter and about 5/8 inch long. Look at the mother board carefully as when these go bad they leak out their electrolyte (potassium hydroxide, aka lye) which will eat the mother board. I usually unsolder it with a solder sucker. In Birmingham Alabama there is a place called Forbes electronics where I can walk in and buy a replacement battery. You must have something similar somewhere.

George

[Alley-Way]

First I want to thank all of you for your help! Definitely pointed me in the right direction… So now I’m flying up to Spokane to solder in a new battery for my Dad. While I’m there he also wants me to setup his Torq Cut on a network. I saw a post about using the DB25 but I want to go with CAT5 or wireless. I’m not necessarily proficient but comfortable around computers and networking - however I’m not too sure about my Dad’s old CNC. Should I consider purchasing an “old-school” ISA network card? Do I need anything special to do this?
.

[machintek]

Usually a single solder prong on each end of the battery but this should work.
I have many mold shops doing 3D work with DX controls. RS232 is very slow to load such long programs. They use WIN 3.11 for workgroups which is compatible with the DOS type machine software. They use a ethernet cable to a ISA network board so it is doable. No, I have not done this. They had a local PC shop do it.

George

[Alley-Way]

(Embarrassing...) I'm struggling to get this right... How do I use the makedisk command?

[Bpt Service]

From main screen press number "9" to exit to DOS, then "Y" to acknowledge exit. At the DOS prompt, "C:>" type in the word "MAKEDISK", without the quotes. You will be prompted to place a blank floppy in the A: Drive. Insert floppy and press enter.

[Alley-Way]

Cool, Thanks!
So I've managed to install the new battery and make a backup disk. Now That I've installed the new hard drive (another thing that was on the agenda) the machine won’t recognize it. From the new drive I've entered the proper Cylinders, Sectors, and Heads into the BIOS. Any thoughts?
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[machintek]

What size hard drive? Was it Fdisked to 504MB?
Does it plug into the MB or into a IO board?

George

[Alley-Way]

It’s a FDM80SQI2G Emphase 40-pin Industrial Flash Disk Module 2 GB - 8000 that plugs directly into a standard 40-pin IDE port. I’ve plugged it directly onto the I/O card. FDISK won’t work if the BIOS setup can’t see it – Right??? (I don’t know.) Why 504 MB? Does size mater?
.

[machintek]

The older mother boards BIOS will not work with a hard drive over 528MB. So we fdisk them to the 504 MB, make it a DOS partition and active.
Then set the CMOS accordingly. 16 heads, 1024 cylinders, 63 sectors (I think).
then load DOS and the machine software and transfer the BMDCPRM.SYS and LEADCOMP.DAT if it exists.

George

[Wiseco]

For your network question :

Last couple month, the single board cpu have gave is last breath. So instead of searching for the same SBC, I've checked which would be compatible with the backplane and selected a newer one. I've bought the Advantech PCA-6781 with a 1gig Flashdrive and 256mb of RAM and installed win98. With that setup, it's was a piece of cake to get my machine plugged on the plant network.

It's not very expensive (near 350$ for the kit) to save time instead of trying something weird.

My machine runs very well and now have more memory to stock 3d NC program!

[Marty_Escarcega]

The older mother boards BIOS will not work with a hard drive over 528MB. So we fdisk them to the 504 MB, make it a DOS partition and active.
Then set the CMOS accordingly. 16 heads, 1024 cylinders, 63 sectors (I think).
then load DOS and the machine software and transfer the BMDCPRM.SYS and LEADCOMP.DAT if it exists.

George

Super old thread. but curiously, has any one done an IDE/SD adapter upgrade in place of the hard drive on a Torq Cut 22? Also, is it possible to run the BOSS software under Windows 98SE?
Just curious....
Marty