[Marty_Escarcega]

Just curious if anyone has replaced their hard drive with an IDE to SD card converter. Also, is it possible to run the BOSS software under Windows 98SE? For networking and possible USB port. Assuming the motherboard was upgraded to one with USB ports and still retained the 16 bit ISA slots for the BMDC card.

Marty

[forhire]

Just curious if anyone has replaced their hard drive with an IDE to SD card converter. Also, is it possible to run the BOSS software under Windows 98SE? For networking and possible USB port. Assuming the motherboard was upgraded to one with USB ports and still retained the 16 bit ISA slots for the BMDC card.

I haven't tried running under Win98SE but running in the DOS 7.0 environment it would be trivial and allow the use of FAT32 for larger partition support. I've been interested in trying FreeDOS for the large drive support but never got around to messing around with it. I haven't hit the limits of the 2 gig partitions so far. I did upgrade my SBC to a newer version that gave me USB, NIC, and a 2 gig compact flash. I run a disk on module rather than a hard drive.

I have USB and LANMAN (workgroup networking/samba) working in the DOS 6.22 environment. I also have FTP support working using mTCP and a packet driver. Here's the URL to my thread documenting the USB and networking.
New (to me) VMC

The only issue with running USB in the DOS environment is the fact you can't hot-swap USB drives. The drive has to be plugged in when it boots up.

[jmullett]

I upgraded my motherboard to a a new pentium industrail one and a DOM (disk on module) which is essentially a small IDE solid state drive like you mentioned. I got it very reasonably from BTPParts / Drisson ( BptParts.com - Bridgeport & CNC Machine Replacement Parts ). They've been a big help at keeping my TorqCut running. For USB connectivity I use a floppy drive emulator I got off Ebay. I recommend you get one from IPCAS as their usb thumb drive partition management software is in English rather than Chinese like most of the cheap ones I have seen. ( ipcas - USB Floppy Emulator: use USB-Stick as floppy und replace 100 floppys with USB-Stick (FDD to UDD) ).

[Marty_Escarcega]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. I assume everyone is still running Dos 6.22. I imagine there isn't much performance increase in upgrading the mother board to Pentium? I ordered an Intel 486DX/100 motherboard foot a backup. I am grateful these use standard PC motherboards.
Marty

[forhire]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions. I assume everyone is still running Dos 6.22. I imagine there isn't much performance increase in upgrading the mother board to Pentium? I ordered an Intel 486DX/100 motherboard foot a backup. I am grateful these use standard PC motherboards.

Mine uses an ISA SBC. I upgraded mine to 800Mhz with 256 megs of ram. I can't say it improved anything as the BMDC does the heavy lifting. I think most anything with ISA slots would work provided it has an ISA clock separate from the CPU clock. Some 486 and early Pentium boards clocked the ISA off the CPU and that caused timing issues with some applications and hardware.

What model of motherboard do you have? Many of them had USB headers on the board and all you need for USB support is the USB backplate.

jmullett, does the usb floppy emulator allow you to hot swap? Doesn't it break up the usb stick into virtual floppies? Have you every hit the 1.44 meg limit?

Another option, if money is no object, is the Calmotion CNC USB. USBCNC-INT - Calmotion I installed one on a Matsuura with a Fanuc 15 control. It works great for DNC.

[svtford4x4]

Just had to replace my monitor. Old crt finally failed.

[Marty_Escarcega]

Just had to replace my monitor. Old crt finally failed.

Did you do an LCD that for the opening? I'm hoping to take the unoriginal monitor out that someone stuffed in there and replace it with an LCD that fits the opening more closely.
Marty

[forhire]

Did you do an LCD that for the opening? I'm hoping to take the unoriginal monitor out that someone stuffed in there and replace it with an LCD that fits the opening more closely.

The previous owner of my machine put an LCD on the outside. Not the prettiest but it works. The black electrical tape is holding on a clear sheet of plexi to protect the monitor for debris. I'm thinking about cutting down the cabinet so it takes up less space. I may rework the display at that time.

Attachment 336786

[svtford4x4]

Did you do an LCD that for the opening? I'm hoping to take the unoriginal monitor out that someone stuffed in there and replace it with an LCD that fits the opening more closely.
Marty

Used a separate monitor on a stand by the machine for a while. Eventually took apart another CRT and put all the parts inside the original housing. LCD is a more reliable option, there was a kit online but it was pricey IIRC. Maybe a simple xclamp design on the back of an lcd to pull it tight to the bezel would work.

[DarkStarMedia]

Welcome Marty! glad you made it. I have an lcd in mine. the PO made an aluminum sheet to cover the back and it looks nice.

Richard

EDT: also, I just put an ssd module in my machine.. see my post about changing the hard drive. It works fine but I think you still need to use the 503mb partition (which is plenty). As far as W98SE, I seem to recall that it will not work correctly because of the emulation it does for dos.

I think you can run W3.1, and I had a discussion with EMI and they indicated that they were testing with FreeDOS successfully.

[nlh]

I have read other posts in this forum where people have mentioned using Win98 successfully, however no details were given. Just off handed comments really.

Also, not sure if they were using win98 or win98SE. Would be great if someone who has successfully done this could respond with more details.

In regards to Win3.11, In a conversation with EMI last year, I asked about using it w/ the Advantech motherboard upgrade but was told they had not had a lot of success....

I have a copy of 3.11 that I downloaded from the net a few months ago and am planning on tackling that as a project this winter. More interested in networking capability than anything else. Certainly worth a try.

[forhire]

In a conversation with EMI last year, I asked about using it w/ the Advantech motherboard upgrade but was told they had not had a lot of success....

I just checked my machine and I'm running the Advantech PCA-6742 with 128 megs onboard with the Eva-X4300 cpu at 300Mhz. I also have a PCA-6743 which works but I'm using the PCA-6742 despite it not having floppy support as it has a compact flash slot onboard.

If you are hoping to use Windows 3.11 or Win98 for network support use the Microsoft LAN Manager Client (LANMAN) for DOS. It's basically a stand alone DOS workgroup client from Windows for Workgroups 3.11 era.
New (to me) VMC - Page 6

It appears Microsoft FTP no longer works... so a quick google found the MSCLIENT install disks here:
https://www.lazybrowndog.net/freedos...rces/MSCLIENT/

[DarkStarMedia]

I just checked my machine and I'm running the Advantech PCA-6742 with 128 megs onboard with the Eva-X4300 cpu at 300Mhz. I also have a PCA-6743 which works but I'm using the PCA-6742 despite it not having floppy support as it has a compact flash slot onboard.

If you are hoping to use Windows 3.11 or Win98 for network support use the Microsoft LAN Manager Client (LANMAN) for DOS. It's basically a stand alone DOS workgroup client from Windows for Workgroups 3.11 era.
New (to me) VMC - Page 6

It appears Microsoft FTP no longer works... so a quick google found the MSCLIENT install disks here:
https://www.lazybrowndog.net/freedos...rces/MSCLIENT/

that is the msclient... I found LANMAN here (not sure it works): https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc...lients/lanman/

[forhire]

that is the msclient... I found LANMAN here (not sure it works): https://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc...lients/lanman/

Either LANMAN or MSCLIENT will work, MSCLIENT is only 2 disks, is newer than LANMAN, and was optimized to connect to WINNT server. I used MSCLIENT... it's referred to LANMAN in Samba... thus the confusion. If you go up a level in the URL you posted you will find the MSCLIENT files.

Here are the MD5sums for the files I downloaded from Microsoft and used:
2a0a0065e8080a3e46e55658415cfb76 DSK3-1.EXE
532c91001ff4750407b00af7007e0984 DSK3-2.EXE

I downloaded the files from the URL you provided Index of /pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/ftp.gcfl.net/pub/freedos/ms-clients/msclient and compared the md5sum and they match above.

[jmullett]

jmullett, does the usb floppy emulator allow you to hot swap? Doesn't it break up the usb stick into virtual floppies? Have you every hit the 1.44 meg limit?

Yes, that's exactly how it works. The USB stick is broken into 100 virtual floppies. I do hit the 1.44 MB limit often times when doing 3D work. I use pkZIP 2.04G for DOS on the DX32 control and a program called 7-Zip on my Windows 7 PC to compress the files and to span them to file sizes less then 1.44 MB. Then unzip them onto the DX32's C:\ drive.

Hot swapping works as long as you are not accessing the drive at the time you change partitions.