Background:

I have a Cincinnati Sabre 1250 with Acramatic 2100 control, circa 2000. I'm using RS232 to transfer files from my PC, but the slow speed isn't cutting it anymore. I've got a new machine now that I transfer files with a USB flash drive, and I'm finding that my Cincinnati is collecting dust. A file that takes 3 hours to get to the old Cincinnati takes about 20 seconds with the USB flash drive.

Question:

Is there a guide out there that can walk me through updating my Cincinnati? I guess my options for file transfer would be USB or Ethernet, and I'm open to either of these options.

If you could help point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it!

... Thanks for any help!

I have a Cincinatti Arrow 1000 with the A2100 control, also, a 2000 model, and it has a ethernet card installed, and it is networked with our company wide network. I transfer files from my CAM computer over the ethernet to a partition of the harddrive that is assigned a drive letter in the Arrow, then at the control move them from the that partition to the main partition so that the CNC software can see it.
With the A2100 being a Windows NT based platform, the first step is to exit the CNC application and then to create the partition drive. You have to do this because you don't want the main portion of the hardrive visible to the network to accidentaly get tampered with. After that is done, install a normal ethernet card that has a driver for NT4.0, restart the machine and install drivers, assign a IP address in the settings page, and you should be fine.
This all hinges on your being fairly proficient with MS Windows, hopefully NT, but if your not especially familiar with NT, but can get around Windows 98 or XP you can still manage to get this done. If your not really familiar with this, it would be best to enroll a friend that is!
I don't have written directions for this, but I think MAG Maintenance tech does, and they are pretty good about sharing this type of instruction for older machines. Talk to Bill Hubbard, he's a pretty helpful guy.
HTH,
John B