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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
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    19

    Unhappy EZ-TRAK SX stopped seeing drives(FDD,HDD)

    Had this machine for a long time and never had a problem. It sat for awhile(about 3 months) and went to power it up and wham no disk found. The bios says there's no drives. I checked voltage at the HDD and the FDD and it has its +5v and +12v. It said the date was something 1980 so i reset it, and it will keep that date but won't count up at all. I also pulled the comm(ide) board and cleaned it including contacts, still nothing. Is this the mobo? I think it just might be. What do you guys think?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
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    1622
    Quote Originally Posted by mrnicks
    Had this machine for a long time and never had a problem. It sat for awhile(about 3 months) and went to power it up and wham no disk found. The bios says there's no drives. I checked voltage at the HDD and the FDD and it has its +5v and +12v. It said the date was something 1980 so i reset it, and it will keep that date but won't count up at all. I also pulled the comm(ide) board and cleaned it including contacts, still nothing. Is this the mobo? I think it just might be. What do you guys think?
    Letting it set for 3 months killed the bios CMOS battery and therein the CMOS data for the hard drive etc. First, replace the 3.6v CMOS battery or let it charge if it will. Probably a Nicad soldered to the board. Then I would boot into the CMOS settings and have it detect the hard drive again. Restart and all should be good to go barring any other issues.

    DC

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
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    3319
    What is "a long time"??? We had similar issues.

    First we replace the HDD/FDD controller card - not an easy find anymore - found some take outs. I think Jameco still sells them but they aren't cheap anymore.

    That sufficed for a while and then more issues. Ultimately we had to install a motherboard.

    If you go the m/b route:

    1. Make sure you keep the SAME bios settings regarding HDD size. DON"T install a larger M/B as the software wasn't designed to work with anything larger. Even if you do install a larger HDD, you MUST format it for the size you have now.
    2. Do NOT activate LBA mode in the bios nor 32bit mode.
    3. Do NOT exceed 133mhz in m/b speed.
    4. Do consider replacing the HDD with a DOM (disk on module is much more robust than HDD). Contact BPT Machine in Carol Stream IL or EMI for one of these - they can probably preload the O/S for you to save time thus making it "plug and play". Follow their recommendations for BIOS settings if installing a DOM.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    19
    Thanks for all the responses. I left the machine powered up over night to try to get a little charge in the battery. Checked it this morning and the date was still the same. I cycled power to learn some new errors (cmos checksum failure, cmos display type mismatch, and keyboard error). And, now the date is 1980 something . So i think the battery is definetly bad and so is the cmos. So what do you think of this? And it still doesn't see an drives.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
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    3319
    Leaving the system on overnight may charge the battery but it WON'T update the CMOS. You have to access CMOS while machine is rebooting (usually by holding in DELETE key while DOS is booting) to reset/update it.

    This means you have to install regular keyboard if I recall as there is no DELETE key on the "trak. There is a away to do it externally but I need to be looking at a machine to describe how.... but this is what I recall:

    There are three plugs in back of pendant:

    0 X
    O

    where X is the plug where the OEM plug is placed. To install an external keyboard configure as follows:

    K 0
    X

    where K is external keyboard and you move X as shown. You can now use a regular keyboard externally.

    Once you set the date in CMOS, it should update properly thereafter and hold a charge if the battery is not bad. If you're having all kinds of keyboard, faults or other gremlins at boot-up, installing a new M/B is probably your best fix.

    Faults clearly indicate that something is in the process of going fritzo and you're gonna need to deal with a more serious issue SOON. Deal with it now on your terms to avoid disaster later on the machine's terms.

    Finding a 133mhz or slower with 2-3 ISA slots (one for BMDC card and another for video card) is going to be your problem. You won't need HDD/FDD card with new M/B as it is built in.

    (Edit: record your CMOS settings, ALL OF THEM and do it NOW. You'll have to match them if/when you install a new m/b, especially the hard drive size setting. DON"t install a larger HD as the software can't deal with anything other than what its fitted with now. If you replace H/D, you'll have to reformat it to the same size you have now....)

    Only place we had luck finding the m/b's was at used computer shows. They are dirt cheap as nobody wants them but it is still a PITA to find them and reverse engineer as needed to retrofit them. Get 2-3, they're cheap and you'll only have to figure out how to use them once and you'll have a life time of spares....

    Or consider giving BPT Machine or EMI a call for a bolt in "modern" solution for M/B and DOM. May be pricey - the only other option is to look for "legacy" PC's.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Posts
    19
    I already have a external (full size) keyboard hooked up and i've been in the bios and all the settings are at there defaults. There's no drive settings to take becasue it doesn't show any drives. I can't even try to boot with a floppy because it says there's no folppy.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
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    1622
    Quote Originally Posted by mrnicks
    I already have a external (full size) keyboard hooked up and i've been in the bios and all the settings are at there defaults. There's no drive settings to take becasue it doesn't show any drives. I can't even try to boot with a floppy because it says there's no folppy.
    Go through the CMOS page by page. The standard CMOS settings will include the time, date, keyboard and display types.

    On the main bios options page there should be a "auto detect hard drive" option. If not, try setting the cyls according to what is listed on your Hard drive. Ours is a type 47 with 1024 cyls. Make sure the keyboard is set to installed and the display is set for VGA. The boot sequence in the "advance settings" should read A, C. There are many other settings that could effect operation. Do not set any of the auto configure. All are disabled in ours, but the difference here is yours is an SX and ours is a DX. I can't say what the bios has for settings on older machines and they are no doubt different, but the principles should still follow standard PC conventions. A call to EMI could get you a CMOS settings list as shipped.

    DC

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    3319
    If you have a floppy and a HDD, your machine should see them. PERIOD.

    You should be able to AUTO DETECT the HDD and Floppy if the machine has one and they are the oem ones PROVIDING the HDD/FDD controller is working.

    If you have a FDD and HDD and your machine all of a sudden stopped recognizing that they are there, you're FDD/HDD driver card is probably fried - been there done that too. Replaced it and shortly thereafter the M/B started acting up.

    Probably the failed/failing FDD/HDD controller hurt the M/B. This is about the time when I learned about the 133Mhz deal regarding a replacment M/B.

    I"d plan on locating a replacment HDD/FDD control for starters (try Jameco) but I'd also start looking for a M/B.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
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    3028
    SX machines booted from a floppy unless like this machine a hard drive has been added.
    The original motherboards could not detect the hard drive parameters. These machines came out in 1992. Nor could they determine the type of floppy (it has to be set manually like other CMOS settings) This is why Bridgeport put a sticker on the hard drive (if purchased from them) of what the hard drive parameters were. With some of these old machines, I have had to put the hard drive into a PC test bed I have to determine the hard drive parameters. I also use this test bed to test BMDCs with the B3T test, FDISK & FORMAT & load hard drives, test ISA video and I/O boards, and make new floppy disks.
    Another trick is to remove the I?O board and clean the edge connector with a soft eraser. This has brought back to life many machines.

    George
    (Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
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    3319
    George:

    Seems as though the machine worked fine (apparently from HDD) and then sat for 3 months. "...and went to power it up and wham no disk found. The bios says there's no drives...".

    Either he lost the bios settings due to a battery failure (it supposedly worked before) or his HDD/FDD controller card died (same logic here, too).

    Exact same things we encountered when we lost card and then the M/B shortly thereafter.

    By using "autodetect" and hoping the HDD is still the OEM one, he shouldn't have to go thru the grief of figuring out what the sector count et al of his HDD is via alternate means.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
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    3028
    NC CAMS,
    I only fear that if it is one of the original mother boards AUTODETECT does not exist.
    I could be 99% certain that if a customer called me on a monday morning that his machine would not boot that his CMOS settings were gone and his battery needed replacing. Most of these NICADs have a high internal leakdown rate to begin with but marginal ones would hold the CMOS overnite and maybe even through a 2 day week end. At the end of a 3 day holiday weekend, I was very busy.
    I also learned quickly that moving the jumper to external battery and adding a external lithium battery was not a good idea either. The nicads when discharged would leak the electrolyte and eat away the deposited wires on the mother board. Thus the mother board was removed the battery unsoldered and replaced with a new one.
    In Alabama, we have thrift stoires where I have found many PC parts to keep these machines going very cheaply. The hard drives, no matter how new and big, can be FDISKED to a size such as 504MB, and formatted and will work with all these older mother boards. As a matter of fact, that is what Bridgeport did and had a service bulletin NOT to use autodetect as they specifically Fdisked the newer hard drives to be backwark compatible to all machines.

    George
    (Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    3319
    Unless the machine owner is computer savy, he should probably consider:

    1. Having somebody replace/fix the CMOS battery.
    2. Start looking for a replacement m/b or used donor pc for service candidate and do do soom.
    3. Preformat HDD from donor to 504 mb to serve as b/u for oem HDD.
    4. Load 'Trak software to b/u hdd as standby.
    5. If he's started having problems with dated equipment, it is only going to get worse....

    P/C based stuff used in an industrial environment that is 10+ years old (maybe more) could be living on borrowed time.

    Although we went thru these same issues with our "TRAK recently, we're up and running and constantly on the prowl for legacy hardware. Can't afford the EMI alternative "bolt in" fixes....

    Living where we live, the computer geeks/shops don't save ISA or legacy stuff slower than 300mhz pentium - they scrap them. Thus, finding 133's or slower with ISA's is getting hard to do.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Posts
    4
    I have the same problem, but quickly fixed it by replacing the CMOS battery. Now the computer boots up fine.

    Now I have a new problem. I hope the BMDC board is ok, but it appears to be broken.

    When I try to go to the Absolute position, the Y-Axis does not move, and the X-Axis keeps moving, and exceeds the origin position, and moves until the physical limits of the machine. It ignores the limit switch. It used to be that the Y-Axis will move first, then the X-axis. Whenever I press the "+" button while it's doing this, the X-Axis stops moving, and the Y-axis moves very very briefly, and an error pops up: "Servo Y DAC Overflow."


    Neither X or Y axis' are freewheeling, so it is not a motor problem. Of course, I can freewheel it when I pwr-off.

    I cannot seem to boot into the HDD w/o the FDD w/ the boot disk. I can't go into MSDOS to run any of the diagnostic programs (BST.exe?). How would I go into MS-DOS?


    It worked perfectly fine prior to this, just that it was annoying to setup the CMOS everytime I booted the computer. Well, in order to replace the battery, I had to remove the motherboard, and remove the old one out.

    Maybe somewhere in the disassembly/reassembly, something got screwed, but I do not know what exactly is wrong.

    Computer is ok. Maybe BMDC (i think that's what it's called) is bad?

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Posts
    3028
    Sounds like a position loop error.
    First: look at the BMDC and see if you can find the device labeled L1. It is toward the end connector, toward the edge connector. It protects the 5VDC as it goes through the BMDC out to the encoders etc. If it is smoked, that is not good.
    Other things to look at: Did you remove any ribbon cables from the BMDC? Have you put them back correctly?
    Is the screen counting down to zero and then giving you a NO BMDC DESKTOP error?
    Is it possible that your hard drive parameters in CMOS are wrong and it is not reading the hard drive correctly and thus not loading software into the BMDC correctly?
    Try cleaning the edge connector with a soft eraser and putting it back into the ISA slot.
    If you know how to get to DOS, load PFM.exe, arrow down to tuner and hit enter.
    Across the top are the axis. move each one by hand, X and Y and Z and see if you see a count. This will verify a bad position loop.
    If so, then where is the problem. Next answer after you give us an update.

    George
    (Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
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    1622
    If you still need to use the FDD to boot up this machine. I do not think that starts up the BMDC properly, so it is not surprizing that it may not home properly either.

    Sounds to me like the CMOS is still not setup correctly, if booting is still a problem. It may boot with the floppy all the way to the point it is ready to home, but the BMDC may not be initialized by the minimal drivers on the floppy.

    If you had other cables swapped, it could be a feedback issue.

    Did you wear static prevention gear when working with the boards?

    Did you do a startup and then wonder if you plugged in a ribbon cable backwards and try it again?

    I would get the bootup sequence to go through to the homing point without failure before looking at anything else. The DOS text screen should say BMDC Running! prior to the homing screen.

    DC

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    3319
    EMI can do BMDC bench test. Considering cost of BMDC, cheap by comparison. If BMDC passes test, you could have toasted the HDD/FDD card and/or the M/B .

    A M/B and/or HDD/FDD controller card that have gone thru a bunch of heat cycles does tend to "take a set" so to speak. R&R'ing it may result in even a slightly different flexure which could damage traces or unseat chips. Result: the thing develops a mind of its own and NOTHING short of replacement will fix it. Keep in mind that most M/B's and HDD/FDD cards were designed as "kleenex" - use once, throw away after use.

    You have to be real careful when plugging in ribbon cables.

    In my case, the OEM assembly guy had the ribbon cable going to center of BMDC card wedged solidly against adjacent HDD/FDD card.

    We moved the HDD/FDD card to remove BMDC card and it (HDD/FDD) started screwing up almost immediately thereafter. See preceding paragraph for probably root cause. Shortly after the HDD/FDD card was replaced we started having M/B problems.

    Separate HDD/FDD controller cards is like pre-486 technology which suggests that the M/B is really old. In light of my recent experiences (GOODNESS, these problem threads are deja vu all over again to what we JUST went thru - AARGH), I'd start looking for a new M/B (see post #13) and contact BPT Machine or EMI for a DOM setup.

    You can be talking weeks of hell trying to fix what you can't fix. Life is simpy too short.... Once you start messing with (as in R&R'ing to "fix" old computer boards), you open up cans of worms that you can never seem to reinsert..... (reinsert prior "kleenex comment" here)

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Posts
    4
    wow, this forums is fast. I'm so glad I found this community.

    NC Cams:
    I have spare hdd's and mobo's from the 486/pentium I era, so I'll swap and check and let you guys know tomorrow. I'll check the HDD parameters again, this time on a different system, since I manually inputted it, based off the information from the CMOS' menu's autodetect feature.


    Machinetek:
    I checked the BMDC, and L1 looks good.
    I already did the eraser trick :P.
    I was worried about the ribbon cables as well, but they check out ok. Ground goes to the last pin, and everything in the ribbons are labeled.

    I'm not sure of what you mean about the screen counting down the zero. I see no countdown.

    I've tried to boot into DOS to no avail. bad HDD perhaps?


    Thanks so much for the very fast replies.

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
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    3319
    Once the system loads DOS, it should start to "countdown" as the EXTRAK program loads.

    If you can't get to DOS from the HDD, you sure as heck will not load "TRAK program cuz DOS has to load first. This suggests bad HDD or bad HDD/FDD control card. Replace accordingly and then retry....

    See if you can get the system to run, if not start system from a bootable disk. Then look for HDD. If you STILL can't find HDD by runaging around in dos with CD command, the M/B is bad and/or the HDD/FDD controller card is not working for some reason.

    I"d start looking for at least a HDD/FDD control card - after you replace it, you should be able to boot system and load "TRAK (providing HDD hasn't crashed). It is easy to see if HDD is bad, plug it into another PC and see if it boots.....

    If Yes, it boots, it is something else (HDD/FDD card or M/B),

    If NO and you KNOW the M/B is OK, call BPT Machine in Carol Stream IL or EMI and get a preloaded DOM to replace the HDD.....

    A DOM is MUCH more robust than a HDD.

    YOU CAN"T JUST SWAP HDD's. The "TRAK system wants to see a special size format for the HDD. See prior post by machinetek for size info... If you do replace HDD, be sure to FDISK it in the appropriate size format BEFORE your reload "TRAK software....

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Posts
    4
    NC Cams.

    Wow, Thanks so much for the information.

    I can now only assume that the FDD/HDD card is defective, since I used a boot disk to get into DOS. I've attempted to FDISK the HDD, and other HDD's connected to the FDD/HDD controller card, and it wouldn't do it. It would detect 3-4 whacky non-DOS partitions all the time on all HDD's that I've tested on (All HDD's are good, btw, heh).

    Thanks so much for your input. I'll be contacting EMI first thing tomorrow to get a replacement, or as you suggested, the preloaded DOM.


    Thank you NC Cams and Machinetek.

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    3319
    CAUTION: Pretty sure the DOM plugs into an IDE slot that the cable to the HDD plugs into - it is essentially a HDD on a chip.

    If you have a M/B with a HDD/FDD control card, it may not work/fit.

    May want to consider upgrading m/b to something 133mhz or slower with onboard IDE control while you're replacing computer hardware.

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