[hrhoward]

Hello,

We have just got a Bridgeport Romi EZ Path S lathe.
On power up it gives me the message "No BMDC, Desktop"
I have checked CMOS. It is reporting the correct date and time even though it has been unplugged for over a month.
The drive info is:
Capacity - 262 MB
Cylinders - 1000
Head - 16
Pre Comp - 0
Landing Zone - 999
Sector - 32

I have taken the BMDC card out and cleaned the contacts. I have a lot of floppy disks, Bridgeport backups, dos, etc...

What should I try next?

Thanks,

Heath

[machintek]

Means the BMDC is not loading. To get that far I am fairly certain your CMOS is correct. I would still do a SCANDISK and DEFRAG from DOS. You may not have those files if you have a 8MB disk on a chip or a piggy back flash card. So you may need some DOS disks. Also look for a file on the C drive called B3T.exe which will test the BMDC. Lastly you can send it to EMI for evaluation.

George

[ss_again]

I recently had a problem with the BMDC not loading on a V2XT. I did a number of tests that were suggested by both Machintek and by EMI with no success in finding the problem. I sent the BMDC to have it refurbished only to have it arrive back with the same issue.
For some reason I decided to try a new pc power supply even though I tested all of the outputs on the installed one and they were normal. Sure enough, that was the problem and all is well now.

Long story short, try a new pc power-supply. They are cheap enough off Ebay usually.

[machintek]

The EZPATHS has a control in a box. The power supply is mounted inside the front cover. It does have very poor regulation and to set the 5VDC has to be removed to get access to the adjustment potentiometer. I believe a normal PC logic supply can be used in its place but mounted outside the box.

George

[fwoodward]

We encountered the same issue you're describing just yesterday. We had BMDC issues, sent the board out for repair and when it was returned and we re-installed it in the machine, same errors as before. We were told the board had several issues, which were all repaired. Ours is a Series 1 Bridgeport DX 2-axis.

So I opened the back panel to watch the BMDC leds as it started up and when it was trying to load the BMDC, the green led would flash and then both red leds would come back on. Both red and green leds were lit on the drive boards so we took both aux boards out of another machine to test them in this machine. When we connected both up, success! So we thought we might have a bad aux board. We both those aux boards in the machine we took the test boards out of and success! So all we can figure is something must have been a little loose or a bent wire or...the planets were not in alignment.

If you have another machine you can swap the boards with for testing or just unplug everything one plug at a time and replug it back in on your aux boards and even your drive boards.

I ran pfm.exe first and it loaded the BMDC so we knew it was an issue getting the signal to the drive boards.

Good luck!

[hrhoward]

Got it up and going again. Turns out it was the back-plane.
Aaron at EMI worked with me to troubleshoot.
I also had to run what was on the disk labeled "Path_All_2.50.21_Install_Update, Disk 1 of 2 for use with MS DOS 6.22"
Runs great.

Thanks to all that helped.

Heath

[frankingpin]

hello .. good morning. I have a machine ez path 1 I have damaged the hdd and I can not back up the diskette or DOS intall.
could you give me a copy of the disks?
from and be grateful.
francisco

[JBROWN1]

So we are having trouble with our Bridgeport Romi EZPATH S, we have sent entire control box to a place and they have fixed whatever was wrong with it, they say it works at their facility been back and forth 3 times now so heres comes the problem.... Computer beeps, starts to boot, then it shuts off and then it beeps and starts to boot again shuts off, and it continues to do this..... even at one point it said no bmdc board but that has also quit doing that
here is the link so you can see what it was doing... only but now it will not get past the part where it says f4 on the video

[hrhoward]

Sounds like a memory issue.

[GIA-Automation]

can you share the files?
i have the NO BMDC problem i run P3T and show some error
do you fix the problem?

Hello,

We have just got a Bridgeport Romi EZ Path S lathe.
On power up it gives me the message "No BMDC, Desktop"
I have checked CMOS. It is reporting the correct date and time even though it has been unplugged for over a month.
The drive info is:
Capacity - 262 MB
Cylinders - 1000
Head - 16
Pre Comp - 0
Landing Zone - 999
Sector - 32

I have taken the BMDC card out and cleaned the contacts. I have a lot of floppy disks, Bridgeport backups, dos, etc...

What should I try next?

Thanks,

Heath