[jwatte]

I took delivery of a new PCNC 440, and spent last evening and today assembling the stand and lifting the mill onto the chip pan and stand.
I'm using my own monitor, not a Tormach one, plugged into the HDMI out of the PathPilot box; a very small 1280x720 HDMI display with 100% seal (no air holes.)
After plugging everything in as per the documentation, and turning it on, the display showed the boot up images (BIOS and Tormach logo) and then loaded a white desktop with the Tormach gribble background. And nothing else.
I found that I could right-click the desktop to open a Terminal, and I further poked around until I found that the command that was supposed to auto-start was "operator_login," which I started.
Doing so would load the license acknowledgement and configure-the-machine screens that are shown in the documentation. I chose the appropriate bits, and it continued to update the Mesa FPGA firmware, and told me to reboot the machine.
I did so, and now the operator_login seems to auto-load, but then immediately reboots the machine!
I'm stuck in a loop where the machine boots, POSTs, loads the Mint linux and Tormach stuff, and then immediately reboots.
I also tried with a bigger display just to make sure that wasn't the problem, but this is still happening.

The instruction booklet says that my machine should have come with a recovery DVD and a DVD drive; neither of those were actually in the package.
I'd have expected perhaps a recovery USB stick instead, but apparently no such luck?
So, any ideas what could be going on, and what I can do to make some chips this week-end instead of having to wait for tech support turn-around? (Which will be terrible, as I'm not at the machine during weekdaytime.)

[syscore]

Your Tormach controller (the PC) doesn't have a DVD drive? You might want to check and see if the DVD disk is in that. My disk came in the pocket of the operator's manual, or with it in the same box (it came separately from the mill). You might want to edit the operator_logon script and comment out the last line that shuts down the controller. Also, check out the path pilot log files. To do this, interrupt the bootup sequence by holding the left SIFT-ALT keys when you see the first splash screen. Then you will be at the desktop and can review the logs and edit the script.

[jwatte]

Poking around by booting from a USB stick, I found a GRUB menu item to restore from factory image.

Unfortunately, the timeout was set to 0 so I didn't actually have any time to press shift, but I could edit grub.cfg by booting from a USB stick, add a short timeout, which was enough to let me press shift and get into restore, where I used the option to restore the factory image (which lives on /dev/sda1)

After doing this, I would get the EULA and machine selection screens again, and it would reboot the system, and then it would be back in the reboot loop.
Start up the animated Tormach images, screen goes black, and computer restarts.

[jwatte]

Your Tormach controller (the PC) doesn't have a DVD drive?

Thanks for the suggestion; no, no DVD drive, just a blank faceplate. No DVD in the operator manual.

[jwatte]

I can't get to desktop with shift-alt, btw; the machine resets before then.
I turned off the parallel port support in the BIOS and re-imaged from the system image, and booted again, and got to pick my machine type again.
After picking the machine type, the machine resets. The instructions claim it should tell me to shut down the machine; it doesn't get to that part.
After boot, a few Tormach slide show pictures show, and the machine reboots again. (Right before it reboots, a relay in the mill cabinet clicks; this is consistent as well.)

My guess is some kernel oops/problem with the Mesa card, perhaps?

Also, I can't boot into recovery mode, because apparently there's a root password. Maybe I should edit /etc/shadow to take that out ...
Whenever I want to poke around, I have to boot from a USB stick and mount the /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda3 partitions.

[jwatte]

Alright, problem solved!

I had previously used a PCNC 1100, where the computer is switched by the mill.
In the assembly instructions for the 440 mill, it only said "plug the computer into a power strip."
I then plugged the power strip into the power outlet at the bottom of the cabinet.
Turns out, no, that's not what it's for; that's presumably for the coolant pump, and cycles when the machine control turns on. Which resets the controller, ...

PEBKAC!

(Although I have some words about the instructions talking about this, as well as the instructions for the stand -- it mentions what seems like the wrong screw dimensions in one step, and apparently there's a bag of nuts I'm supposed to use, but isn't mentioned anywhere? Steps 14 and 15 in the instructions.)

[tmarks11]

You might want to check and see if the DVD disk is in that. My disk came in the pocket of the operator's manual

Pathpilot now comes on a USB thumbdrive. No discs required, so no surprise they stopped building the controllers with CD drives.

[jwatte]

Pathpilot now comes on a USB thumbdrive.

Yes, I would have expected that, but there was no thumbdrive in the package I got.

Also, they probably should update the documentation to match :-)

[syscore]

I'd definitely get them to send you the thumb drive. Not only as a backup, but you can also install it on a virtual machine and run it in simulator mode. I have found the simulator to be very handy for testing and learning both PathPilot and Linux. The steps to set it up are documented in this forum. Even if you have to buy the thumb drive, it is only $19, but it should be free an owner (it was to me when I upgraded).

[jwatte]

Yes I will mention that! There are some other small discrepancies -- a silicone washer missing for the flood coolant kit, I got two of the vise key sets, and I have a bunch of errata for the build documentation...
I'm considering making my own clone of the install; I'm pretty handy with the Linux already so that should be possible.
My PP came with a 30 GB SSD, which is nice; no spinning platters to break. I wonder how long they've been doing that?