[bill south]

Hey Folks;
I just upgraded my pathpilot from 1.9 to 2.1.5 and for some reason, my tool table keeps getting reset to 0. I used the Tormach procedure for upgrading and backed up/restored my system and all seemed well. However, when I cycle the system (shut down / restart) my tool table goes to zero. I can again restore and it is back. Also, I tried to manually repopulate the table (offsets) but it does the same thing. Cycle the system and all is again, lost.
Has anyone see this before. Any ideas.
I did ask the same question over on the linux pathpilot forum but have not received any guidance.
I can get by by restoring the system every startup but what a PITA.
Once again!!!
Help Please.
Bill

Oh yeah, where did the pathpilot area on system controllers disappear to? The linux thread is there by no PathPilot!!!

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry Guys.
My system is a novakon torus pro servo system.
Old but reliable.
B

[Steve303]

Bill, check your start up log file. I think what is happening is pathpilot is overwriting your tool database file (tool.tbl) with the contents of tool.old which in this case is a empty file. Try making copies of your good tool.tbl database file and rename one of the copies to tool.bak and one to tool.old in the same directory as your tool.tbl file is located. I do not understand why but I think what is happening is pathpilot thinks the tool.tbl file is either missing or corrupt and overwrites it with the contents of tool.old which in your case is just zeros. I think this might work.

Are the tool descriptions correct but the tool diameters and tool offsets are being zeroed out on startup? I am using PathPilot 2.12 on my Pulsar without issues.

Steve

[bill south]

Thanks Steve;
I spent the entire day reloading pp 2.1.5 just in case I had screwed something up on the first attempt. Still No Joy! Same problem. I spent several hours yesterday just trying to understand how PP (linuxcnc) works and want to throw this out for review. I found yesterday that the tool information is in the tool2.tbl with zeros being listed in tool.tbl. Table 1 did have the tool ID (size - I usually don't fill in the descriptions) with zeros in the data table. Soooo, my thoughts are that PP rewrites the table when exiting. This would assure that any changes made to the tool inventory will be updated each time the program shuts down. Which means that if we use old data from a table that the new tool may not show up each time we power up thus major issues when running a new part.
Today if I get a chance, I'm going to attempt to find the part of a "post" hal file that rewrites the table when exiting. This will be the problem area (at least in my tiny little mind).
Wow, so much to learn.
Also, I'll give your suggestion above a try today before delving into the code. If it works and updates the tables with new information each time, we have a winner.
Thanks for the help.
Bill

[bill south]

One good thing that I found was the when I plugged the old SSD with PP 1.9.X on it, I can get back into business. But I do like the features of 2.0 and above so I'll continue to wade through it.
B

[Steve303]

Hey Bill, I was tinkering with the novakon.ini file and comparing them to the new PP 2.72 ini file. I figured out why your tool offsets we being lost. A small change is needed in the novakon.ini file to solve this.

You have rename tool.tbl to tool2.tbl under the [EMCIO] section of your ini config file. Problem solved.

[EMCIO]
EMCIO = io
CYCLE_TIME = 0.100
TOOL_TABLE = ~/mill_data/tool2.tbl

Steve

[bill south]

Thanks Steve;
I'll give this a shot. It was a pain to finally figure out that the newer versions was the cause so I finally just kept reverting back to previous versions until I found one that worked for me.
Thanks again.
Bill