[Dphillips30]

I have a Bridgeport TC-1 with the CIB that i'm having some troubles with. When i cut the machine it goes through the start up then the exectutive load then i get the BMDC Running! prompt. The screen changes to where i can enable the drives and all. The problem is once i try enabling the drives it attempts to but the machine goes into a stall like state no errors or alarms. I can go to the maintenance page where it loads the program again and i can try to enable the drives again but it does the same as before and i get a "Drive command error at BMDC" or "Communication failure at BMDC" After trying this a couple times the computer can become very slow and sluggish. I've been able to home the machine out a few times when the drives did fire on and can move the the x,y,z axis' just fine but the machine eventually kicks off again within 5 minutes or so. I spoke with a couple guys at EMI and they told me that it could either be a bad Flash Disk or a bad BMDC board. Then there has been a couple guys say that it could either be corrupt software or even a weak battery in the CIB, if there even is a battery in there?

Anyone ever had any troubles like this or any knowledge on these machines? Any help would be greatly appreciated

[machintek]

Let me explain why the battery is being mentioned and its relationship to machine operation. The TC-1 has a CIB or Control in a box and thus must have a all in one 1/2 size mother board. Every mother board has its own variables/parameters called CMOS which are backed up by a battery. AMong the pages of CMOS are such things as the time and date and type of floppy and type of hard drive or whatever mass storage device is used. If the battery gets weak or dies, the CMOS can get scrambled/corrupted. When this happens the control may not boot or may not load the machine software correctly thus the machine may not work correctly.
You could go to DOS and type in date and enter or time and enter to see if that is correct. But software can still be corrupted.
Also older technology such as a flash card and a Disk On A Chip, have only so many read/write cycles and may fail. If these are used, the C drive or primary master is set to none.
BTW: I have seen 3 types of CMOS batteries on these mother boards. One is a IC called a Dallas Real Time Clock. another was a round can that was a lithium battery soldered to the board. And lastly the coin type lithium battery in a holder such as a CR2032.

George

[Dphillips30]

Thanks George,

I checked the date and time today on the battery through dos and it seemed to check out ok. The time was off by a few hours and the date was off by 1 day. I guess that can be expected from a machine that's about 10-11 years old? Should my next step be to try and get another copy of the software since it could possibly be corrupted? If so do you recommend anybody who would still sell it? I've got 2 copies of the "most recent" software offered for these controls and have tried reinstalling it by doing the A:/upgrade but that didnt seem to help at all. I'm almost to the point of biting the bullet and purchasing a new flash disk or whatever they offer now to replace these. If you don't mind let me know your thoughts on what i should do next. Thanks

Dane

[machintek]

What versions of software do you have?
Also before doing anything, back up your bmdcprms.sys (machine parameters) and if there, leadcomp.dat (pitch error comp file).
Then try doing a install.bat with the disk that matches what version comes up on the main screen after boot.
You could go to the maintenance page and see what the DRIVES ON COMMAND is doing. Do the drives driop out with the command still on?
But if you want the advice, EMI-inc,net would be the source for a DOM and software.

George

[Dphillips30]

George,

The software version I have on disk is the 4.79.22/6.89.57. It was also the version which was running on the machine. I did an install today of it and i'm still having the same issues. I even tried cleaning the flash disk through the flash disk utilites floppy but still had no luck. When i attempt to fire the drives through the maintenance page they rarely fire on and i get a "DRIVES COMMAND FAILED AT BMDC." One other thing that i should mention is that after tinkering with the machine for a while the program will not load. It will just go through the executive load and bring up a c:\ Once i power it down and let it sit i can usually get the program to load a couple of times before it starts doing the same thing again.

Dane

[machintek]

Try running the B3T.exe test. When done running it press enter for the results.

George

[Dphillips30]

Got the machine to fire up this morning. When it first started up i got a "error reading disk" at the home screen but there was no disk in the a:/? The error message went away and i was able to get the drives on home it out.
But as i was rapiding off of the x home the drives kicked out again. On the main screen i received a "communication error at BMDC." I went to the maintpg and attempted to fire the drives on again and got a "drives command failed at BMDC" After this i rebooted the machine and ran the b3t test through dos. The first thing to pop up was

"Cannot determine board type"
Please choose the correct board:
1. BMDC3L
2. BMDC3
3. BMDC4

Im not sure as to which board is in the machine i have. I tried running the test using all the boards listed and the BMDC4 board is the only way i can get the machine to pass through the tests. But im not sure if the BMDC4 is the same as the board in the machine.

The board in my machine has BMDC3SV REV"C" printed on a tag on the back. Do you know which board in the b3t test would correspond to this?

[machintek]

If it cannot identity the BMDC, the message is correct. No communications to the BMDC. Try pulling it out of the back plane and cleaning the edge connector with a soft pink eraser. Plug it back in and try it.

George

[Dphillips30]

Pulled the board out, cleaned it, and reseated it. It is still doing the same thing. I ran the b3t test again and it read the board as BMDC3. While running the test it would say BMDC3 TIMEOUT. Then after hitting enter the only error that it shown was in the "Load and Run Test Error Log" It read "Load and Run errors = 1" In all other test logs except this one it showed errors = 0.

[machintek]

well, now it sees the BMDC but cannot load the software. Talk to EMI about what you have done so far. Believe you may need a BMDC.

George

[Dphillips30]

Got a new BMDC board as well as the flash disk upgrade with the new smb that they sell. Put the new BMDC board in and it fired right up. I believe i'll just hold the new flash disk for when the original goes out. Thanks for all your time and help George.