[cwalker1960]

Yeah I realize I never got into the bios on it. I was told by someone else that the bios was not accessible on this particular machine.That didn't sound logical to me but I didn't know any better so I just went with it. I don't remember now who it was that told me that.
When you first wrote to me I had just pulled all the hurco computer and console off it the weekend before.
As I said I didn't cut any wiring removing it all so I could put it all back right now .
Got the hurco controls mostly bench wired back together so I'm gonna work on it this weekend and see if I can get any further along.
Sounds like you do a lot of machine repairing,, Is that mainly what you do? , or do you run a machine shop too? What chinese controller have you used for a retro?
Yeah , I know i can get long winded sometimes, some of it is just me trying to be thorough so maybe you will catch something I've missed or done wrong.
Youtube could be a great place to post a video of hard drive setup if you wanted to do one,, and you can post links to it in some of these forums to make it easy for people to find.

[mprotec]

Howdy cowman (can't be a cow'boy' at our age, rite?),

How the going? take your time... enjoy yourself...I will check in now and then..

Yup, Started a jobshop many eons ago,,, then into automations,, building the whole damn automated line...

Too many expensive 'experts' to pay... then just cut back ...down to jobbing again...then oversea joint venture...selling brain juice..

Got sick real bad... came back..sold the properties.. rented some place stored up all machines...waiting to die!

Thank God... my ticket not accepted...so... tried to get all machines working again... then AHHA! cncs not meant to stop for long..

they got more sick than me,,, so started repairing day after day then months.... then got fed up with some obsolete boards...

Went to china... visited many controller manufacturers...Got to know this company started by a lecturer from one of their university..

Been working with him last ten years.... I mean, giving him feedbacks about what machining needs and he make new improvement..

Very happy he is slower and older and a bit wiser than me.... he doesn't change what is not necessary ... simple stable controllers...

Then the idea came,... so many dead good metal machines lying around. Started buying good old japanese, german machines and retrofit them back to life...

So far so good, no deadlines, once ready theres a good market out there.. making money at your own pace!

Small team to help around, good healthy business...

But Hurco, I will always repair until dead end...cos I like the conversational programme very much!
I once taught a young chap to run it in a week and he doesn't know english much...

Well, in your country there are lots of good iron monster dead due to the controllers...maybe you could make it like me,

No more bosses over your shoulder, no more deadlines, and the heart gets to pump at its own pleasure or 'pressure'.

tommorrow I will be looking at another old hurco.. maybe its has your system.. Will look for the keyboard plug in for ya..


Meahwhile, take it at your pace, no hurry, repairing machines must not be hasty!


mike

[skullworks]

Good to see someone else getting some help in this thread.

My Hurco in a coma is a KM3P with the Max32 upgrade put on the Max II chassis/card rack - and yes I really want to salvage the Max32 as when the owner who bought the Max32 upgrade to the existing Max II bought every Bell & Whistle option Hurco offered at the time like 3D, DXF conversion, Insert pocket library etc.

I been a bit distracted because I bought a second Hurco - this one is a KM3 with Max II. Both CRT's are toast, memory board is dead, although I can remove all the shorted out Dallas memory and replace with the correct RAM and do a battery backup conversion. But I won't. This KM3 will be a LinuxCNC since it has the Servomate Amps which will make the conversion a snap with the Mesa cards I have for it. Also I will run the spindle via VFD so it will be a 220V single phase machine.

The Max32 is worth the effort to fix as a Hurco Conversational, The KM3 is too far gone - but what has failed are items not used with LinuxCNC anyway so no real loss. The Max32 will require a rotary phase converter to run.

But best of all - I bought both machines fully tooled, so between the two I now have about 70 U200 shank tool holders.

[cwalker1960]

yeah mine's still in a coma too. I got the keyboard connected to the motherboard ,, nothing I do seems to bring up a bios.. a DOS disk won't boot in it.. I tried running the hurco floppies again since I have the hard drive properly formatted , this time the first disk loaded as before but when it called for the 2nd floppy instead of getting the usual "disk sub system failed to initialize " I got a "security key is missing or invalid"
Buddy form the hurco store forum has mentioned something about a video redirect file that has to be run , it seems the video signal for the right monitor comes from the personality board. Buddy also suggested that I purchase an already formatted and loaded hard drive as it may not even be possible to create one myself. I wouldn't mind so much paying for the hard drive if I knew that was all it needed , but hate to throw good money after bad so I'm at the thought right now that this is going to be a conversion.. I've been looking more and more at dynamotion's kflop and kanolog boards so haven't fully decided yet which way to go..
decisions,, decisions ,,

[skullworks]

My HDD is sitting on top of a great old 486/Win95 system on the dinning room table.

I was able to copy all but like 7 hidden files, was not sure about using the "attrib" command from W95, didn't want to bork up a working drive. I have an identical HDD and hope to clone the working drive.

The big deal is the screw comp / pitch error mapping file which is unique to each machine. Without that you may not be able to hold .0001". But even without that error table your machine should hold within .0012" in the worst spots. I'm not sure if Hurco will still do it but they used to offer recalibration testing which would regenerate the pitch error map.

The error you are getting "security key is missing or invalid" points to some of the wiring which actually has a parallel port dongle inline. If that wiring is not attached - or if a printer is attached but not powered on the system will fail to "SEE" that dongal.

I have stashed away several other donor transplant HDDs so I might be able to make up a drive for you. Of course this may be a moot point if you can not get into the BIOS settings.

[cwalker1960]

I have all 3 max32 version 1.54 floppies ,, and a 4th disk , labeled machine configuration that contains the screw mapping files which was last updated in 95 i believe it was,, even have a sheet in the folder from the service tech that recalibrated the screws.I have a parallel port on the side of the cabinet and also 2 serial ports , but nothing is attached to them ,, haven't really noticed anything else in the wiring that resembles a parallel port , but I'll do some more checking..
unless something slight of miraculous happens at this point , I'm pretty set on just converting it.. Linuxcnc/Mesa cards has been my first choice for it , but lately I've been reading more and more on dynamotions kflop.. I'm surely interested in hearing everyone's input on the best route for conversion.

[skullworks]

Great, sounds like you have everything you need to create a new system drive once you can get the system to POST into BIOS.

The Security key is inline with the wiring going from the card rack to the rear of the parallel port inside the cabinet.

I will try to shoot a pic and get it posted sometime today.

At first I could not find mine either. I thought the key was just a file on the HDD. Someone set me straight and told me where to look and sure enough there it was. I noted that Max II systems don't have a dongal cause all the machine O/S is in the eprom set and not easily copied.

My KM3P has the MAX400 amps and they seem to use +/- 15V where as my KM3 with Servomate Amps uses standard +/- 10V. I'm expecting the base conversion to be pretty easy. The bell's and whistles I plan to add will complicate things a bit.

[mprotec]

skullworks, glad you came to help out too... Perhaps you could let me have more info regarding the conversion with mesa cards...Would it work better with mach ??

Yo! clint...Have you got into bios? I don't think the key or dongle will affect a basic bios boot! perhaps somebody can enlighten us...
First you must get into bios...that is to determine you have a working motherboard...
Once you jump the gun you will get lost again...

Ferget bout all else... get into bios first! Is your vga card giving out signals?? Is your monitor working?
Don't go to hard disk before you can get into bios...cos even with a working hard disk you still need to alter settings in bios before it can work!

Sigh! think I am getting old...keep reminding you again and again!

mike

[cwalker1960]

skullworks, glad you came to help out too... Perhaps you could let me have more info regarding the conversion with mesa cards...Would it work better with mach ??

Yo! clint...Have you got into bios? I don't think the key or dongle will affect a basic bios boot! perhaps somebody can enlighten us...
First you must get into bios...that is to determine you have a working motherboard...
Once you jump the gun you will get lost again...
Ferget bout all else... get into bios first! Is your vga card giving out signals?? Is your monitor working?
Don't go to hard disk before you can get into bios...cos even with a working hard disk you still need to alter settings in bios before it can work!

Sigh! think I am getting old...keep reminding you again and again!

mike

Hey Mike,
I haven't forgotten about the need to get into the BIOS,,, I have made my keyboard cable following the pinouts from the hurco drawings , but no success in getting into bios
I've tried the del key, escape key, f1, f2 f8,f10,f12, and control/ alt ,, so far none of them bring me to the bios..the left monitor comes on, I haven't seen anything on the right monitor yet.
I have been told by at least one person that the bios may not be accessible on this particular machine. I don't know if this is machine specific or if the person telling me that was just mis informed . I have several different versions of DOS disks that I have tried and it won't boot any of them .. Any more suggestions?
Mesa electronics boards seem to be by far the most popular used with linuxcnc. They offer a variety of pci boards to control analog and digital servo drives and expand I/O for encoders, coolant pumps, limit switches, remote pendants etc.

[mprotec]

yes clint,

I did ponder on the one suggestion that this model's bios is not accessible, but how can the field service guy going to format your hard disk on the machine....which they usually do and how can they set those hard disk CHS?

Basically on older computers these bios settings which controls the motherboard is very important...

Even the com ports are to be set in order for loading programmes in.

Therefore, my (two cents) conclusion is.... there has to be a way into the bios...Perhaps skull or some guys here which has got experience dealing with your model...

Actually, getting into the bios do helps in many ways...esp setting the keyboard, hard disk, floppy wether its 720mb or 1.44....

I went to someones place to see the same max32 like yours but its running on fanuc drives and its no longer in power....
did look around for the keyboard input but no luck!

Guess, you just have to get into cmos (bios) first before anything else..(that is my guess)

What I did with one of the hurcos is like that...

1.first I removed all the boards in the rack except the motherboard....even the hard disk board...

2. check power supply on the back panel sockets where the motherboard sits...

3. Then plug in all the cables to the motherboard..

4. Let it boot up from motherboard...after a few tries!

5. Then it will ask me to go into settings F2 or F1 to continue...

6. On the hawk its different... I need to hit the escape key.. again it only works after a few tries...when it doesn't detect any drives...

Perhaps you could spend sometime on your motherboard... check the rams...check for burnt marks...or maybe slot it into your friends similar machine
and see if it boots....

I know and can feel your patience is getting thinner... but hey! that normal in dealing with dead machines...lol

mike

[bloke]

When you Fdisk and format the HDD, it sets it up as the BIOS is programmed. You may find that you have the EPROMs on the CPU that are programmed with the fixed HDD and memory. If so, you won't be able to alter the BIOS without the later EPROMs.
Fdisk it with a 10Mb active partition.
Fdisk the remainder as the second partition.
Format C:\ and give it a volume name of EXECUTIVE_1
Format D:\ and give it a volume name of PART_PROGS
Make sure the first file loaded from the executive disks to C:\ is HURCO.LDR
Copy the remaining files from the floppies to the C:\ drive
Combine EXECUTIVE.001 and EXECUTIVE.002
Run the bootloader
Add the configuration files from the config. floppy to the same locations on the C:\ as they were on the A:\

[cwalker1960]

When you Fdisk and format the HDD, it sets it up as the BIOS is programmed. You may find that you have the EPROMs on the CPU that are programmed with the fixed HDD and memory. If so, you won't be able to alter the BIOS without the later EPROMs.
Fdisk it with a 10Mb active partition.
Fdisk the remainder as the second partition.
Format C:\ and give it a volume name of EXECUTIVE_1
Format D:\ and give it a volume name of PART_PROGS
Make sure the first file loaded from the executive disks to C:\ is HURCO.LDR
Copy the remaining files from the floppies to the C:\ drive
Combine EXECUTIVE.001 and EXECUTIVE.002
Run the bootloader
Add the configuration files from the config. floppy to the same locations on the C:\ as they were on the A:\

A quote from another forum "Ah, this old chestnut. You could put the drive in an old pc with the bios parameters set to 1024=cyl 16=heads 0=lzone 0=wpcom 50=sectors "
Bloke,
I followed those instructions to set the bios in the old desktop computer I used to set up the hard drive,
then followed the rest of the instructions as you posted here to reload it. When put back in the machine , it doesn't seem to read the hard drive at all.This link is the exact way I reloaded the hard drive..https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...Byszi9LLU/edit
Should i be able to get into the bios on the machine?, even if not to alter , but just to see what the c/h/s is set at?
I've got the keyboard connected to the motherboard , but it doesn't seem to do anything that I can tell.
I've followed everyone's suggestions so far ,, and I don't know what else to do to it.

[skullworks]

OK - better late than never.

Pic 1 shows the port on the main Max32 board that the parallel cable attaches to (outlined in yellow)

Attachment 293022

Pic 2 shows the dongal mounted to the I/O panel below the FDD and above the 2 serial ports. Note that in my installation the dongal is being used as the actual output connector.

Attachment 293024

Hope this helps - Note: When I shot this pic the HDD card was removed from the card rack.

[skullworks]

I need to get back to work... But I would like to say one thing.

Gutting these machines and DOWNGRADING them to use MACH 3 is a really sad waist of good iron. That said - MACH 4 is expected to be able to work with some MESA hardware and might allow a user to put more of the machines true potential back to work. It is extremely difficult to get MACH 3 to utilize +/- 10V analog velocity based servo drives. On the other hand there are several different solutions to control the original OEM analog servo amps from MESA and other vendors with LinuxCNC.

Gecko Drives are great for small hobby machines but can't drive a real industrial grade machine like these Hurco's realistically.

And every time I hear of people wanting to pull the servos and mount stepper motors I want to smack them up side the head and ask them if they are truly insane?

I will at a later date explain the MESA card options as I all ready have several on hand that could be used. I will be using LinuxCNC and the Hurco OEM servos and OEM supplied Servomate amps in my KM3 conversion. In the process the machine will gain rigid tapping and a full 4th axis. Adding these to the Ultimax control is difficult to impossible at this late date since Hurco has abandoned support for these older legacy controls. To do this via LinuxCNC will be easy.

[cwalker1960]

skullworks,
Yeah I had already located the dongle after you mentioned it was in the paraport line , mine is just like yours.
Also , started another thread relating to hurco conversion if you want to join in. I know i would appreciate any advice you have on the matter. there is another guy already joined in the discussion and he is headed towards a hurco conversion using kflop, kanalog and kmotioncnc,
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/dynomo...ml#post1764360