Hello:
This is my first post, and I hope I'm not being greedy by asking a question, instead of answering one.
But I don't know if I'm worthy, among all the Gurus.

I recently aquired a V2XT control only, I recieved several floppys with it bossxt,sx15,dx32, none of which seems to be any good, when i try to list the directorys in dos.

When I power up the control the floppy drive power light goes on for minute and then goes off (it has a WD286-WDM2 motherboard with a wd hardrive)
then I get three messages, 1. clockchip has lost power 2. drive 0 seek failed,
drive 1 seek failed 3. no boot device found.

When I try rebooting the floppy drive does nothing until I reset, then the messages come back up.

Could it be I just need a new floppy boot disk, or do I have a bad motherboard?

Thanks for any replys

Maybe you might need to replace the battery for the cmos?

The batteries on fpu card are good, but I'm wondering if there is an internal battery in the clockchip itself. I reset the time and date when powered up and thats where it stays the next time I power up.

The fact that you have a Western Digital 286 tells me a lot. It also means you have a FMDC board and the machine was originally a SX15. It needed a floppy to boot and ran DOS 5. I did convert one such machine to a hard drive but it was a chore as the software had to be pieced together. Besides the 4 AA batteries there is a CMOS battery on the mother board. It lets the mother board remember what kind of floppy it has, what are the hard drive parameters for the hard drive if present, time, date, boot sequence, etc. I believe you need to press the F1 key (it in the maintenance manual) while it was booting and get to the CMOS so they can be set. If the battery is dead, this may need to be done every time the control is booted. A bootable floppy will have command.com on it as well as 2 hidden files. The SX floppy should be bootable and should load the machine software to RAM memory. The DX floppy is to load a hard drive with the necessary files. Most DX floppies are NOT meant to load the files that a FMDC board needs. DX machines have BMDC boards and communicate to the mother board through the backplane. The WD board communicates to the FMDC board with a RS232 comm port. Like I said, for a hard drive the software had to be pieced together.

George W.

Thanks Machintek:

That info helped a lot. I removed the hardrive, physical and in the cmos, and now the floppy drive seems to be responding. But I think my boot disk is corrupted.
When I check it on my pc in windows ,I see the command.com, but when I try to look at the dir. in dos I get nothing.
Does Bridgeport (Hardinge) still support the SX15 software?

There is ZERO support for this machine from BPT or Hardinge. Give me your email address. If you do not have a firewall, I can send you a self extracting ZIP file (it will have a .exe extension). This came off the dealer section of the BPT website before it was terminated. Extract it to a floppy. I have to investigate if it is ready to be a boot disk with software or if it is bootable floppy intended (extracted to a floppy that has the DOS 6.20 boot files on it already). As a side note, the FMDC is a very difficult board to repair. EMI (Electrical Mecahnical Integrators) do sell conversions to use a BMDC instead of the FMDC. I believe it may need a new motherboard to go along with it. I wonder if they keep the EGA monitor or if a VGA will be needed. The problem is finding a EGA video card. It is just a jurassic control. Think of "dog years" to a factor of ten.

George W.

George W.

The last piece of software BPT had on its website for this machine was named V2XTsx4.411_3.41_6.20 exe and was intended for controls from serial number 1 through 456 inclusive. These had the FMDC board. This is a version that does not give all sorts of errors when used with DOS 6.20. It is bootable intended which means they expect you to extract it to a floppy which is already a DOS 6.20 bootable disk.

George W.

I have a disk that is labeled ver 4.41/3.41 but again, it seems to be corrupted.
Jurrasic? This was supposed to be a step up from a dynapath 10.

Make sure the disk you are booting from has command.com and hidden files IO.SYS and MSDOS.sys.

George W.

Hi All,
I have a V2XT which I am beginning to get functioning again. I am able to get to the BOSS XT screen, where it says loading operator interface, then it goes into a machine check screen which eventually says Failed. Next, executive loads, but fails indicating error code -1. Don't know what that means.
Checked so far: Power supplies OK on FMDC, SAFL. Don't know what or where a RSRS board is. Had a monitor which displayed raster, and found the 5V logic supply dead on the monitor, fixed with ext 5V supply. Confirmed Overload relay not tripped. Air pressure present during power up.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance for any help!
bryan

Sorry, newbe posting in the wrong area...what did you expect??

Need help, I have a v2xt sx machine. The problem I had is the clock battery went bad. I replaced the battery, however when I opened the cabinet door to replace I also replaced the 4 AA batteries with the power off---oops. Now I need to reset fmdc parameters. I do not have boot disk, can anyone help?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/v2xt/

The above is a link to a V2XT users group on Yahoo. The reason I mention this is that these software disks are there for download. I know. I put them there. You downloading what you need takes away the firewall problem that I have been hitting more and more often trying to send EXE files.

George

I downloaded the boot files. and have on 3-1/2 floppy. What is the next procedure on loading to machine. Could you tell me step by step.

Thanks for the files,

Kent

Hi George,

I know this is not entirely part of the thread but hope it helps.

One way to send *.EXE in e-mails to places that reject them is to change the file extension, say From EXE to TXT. and let the other person know to change it back to EXE before they run the program.

The typical SX machine does not have a hard drive but after so many years, this probability drops. Typically, the disk should boot your machine and load the software as well as the executive to the FMDC. If it does not, you may not have the right disk, or your CMOS may not be set up correctly for the floppy.

George