Need Help!- Bridgeport EZ Trak SX-II Startup Error

[duramaxmachines]

Hi I have a 1994 Bridgeport EZ Trak SX-II and when booting up, the screen displays this:

CMOS System Options Not Set
Run Setup Utilities
Press F1 To Resume

I tried hitting F1, but none of the keys on the keyboard do anything. If anyone could help me out, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,
E.K.

[machintek]

You need a full size keyboard.
That can be attached to the back of the operator/monitor/keyboard pendant.
There are two unused plugs all the way to the left. Move the existing plug to the top left. Plug the full size keyboard beneath it. Those two plugs are nothing more than a jumper.
The root problem is the CMOS back up battery on the mother board. There are a ton of posts about this. Search for them.
In a nutshell, because of the age of the machine, the possibility of the original mother board being inside the machine is slim. But if your mother board has a NiCad CMOS battery, it will leak its guts out and ruin the mother board. The NiCad type are soldered onto the mother board. Others may have a coin style lithium battery. Still others may have a "real time clock chip/IC".
Change the battery and then enter the CMOS. Because there are dozens of varieties of CMOS it would be difficult to tell you what to input.

George

[duramaxmachines]

Hi George,
Thanks for your help. I plugged in a new full size keyboard and was able to go through the CMOS setup. Now it is saying:
Diskette Boot Failure
Insert Diskette in A and Press Any Key To Continue

The disk is in the drive. The version is 3.08 dated 10/18/05. The floppy drive light comes on twice and then goes off when the error message appears. Do you think there is a problem with the floppy drive or the floppy itself? Is there some place where I can get a new disk?
Thanks,
E.K.

[machintek]

Check CMOS that floppy A is set to 1.44MB 3.5 inch.
Make sure boot sequence is A then C.
Make sure keyboard test is off or for a newer MB that it halts on no errors.
Do you also have a hard drive? Rare these days to find a SX that still boots from only a floppy which was the stock set up.

George

[duramaxmachines]

In the CMOS, the floppy is set to A and is 1.44MB 3.5"
There is no hard drive. So the C is set to not installed.
We do not have the original diskette so we are using a copy. If the diskette is bad, how can I tell and how would I acquire a new one?
What type of motherboard is in this machine?

Thanks,
E.K.

[machintek]

Did this disk ever boot before?
Sometimes copies do not transfer the system files which create a bootable disk.

George

[duramaxmachines]

The disk did work before. The machine was disconnected for a few months and we just reinstalled it. We do not have the original disk anymore. We replaced the floppy drive with a new one and tried it, but got the same error again. Where would I get a new disk? Also what are the advantages of installing a hard drive and where would we get the necessary program files for that?
Thanks,
EK

[machintek]

For the older SX machines i do not go any newer than 3.02. This version works well and has a screen saver. Also it looks for a hard drive and if it does not see one creates a RAM disk. The downside of a SX is that you have to boot from a specific disk to load the backlash comp and last part program zero. If you put in a program disk and set zero, it is not saved to the boot disk. Also the environment in a machine shop is not good for a floppy. Do you know why schools switched from chalk boards to dry erase? Chalk dust killing the floppys on the Apple 2E PCs. Yes, that goes back a few years.So those are the advantages of a hard drive. It also boots quicker, stores a lot more (more to lose too so back up) and as said is a lot more reliable.
EMI sells software but I do not know if it goes back to a SX machine. The original SX machines had 386 processors. Then 486SX then 486DX. The 386 western digital did not have a plug in ISA IO board. I remember installing a SX V2XT and had to upgrade the mother board to accept a hard drive and windows but spent two days there playing with files to get it to load and run.
I do not know why you are not booting. Could be the floppy. Can you run a dir on it on a windows PC and enable seeing hidden files?
I have tried sending compressed disks to my service engineers but they expand wrong and do not work. Way back when I found a way to create a image of a floppy and my guys had the same software so they could create the exact floppy I sent the image of.

George

George