HELP! Gotta fix 2 Series 1's!

[cabledude]

Hi-

I have two Series 1 BPT's, one BOSS 5 and one BOSS 6. I've had the BOSS 5 since 1982 (bought used) and bought the BOSS 6 new in 1984ish (last of the steppers). Both are pretty much box stock, so you can imagine the pile of bad transistors and bridge rectifiers I have. I buy the transistors by the dozen at my local elex supplier.

I got used to replacing the transistors, but my BOSS 5 now has a bad ERS board, and the BOSS 6 now has a bad ZDI board (I think). I'm considering (strongly) replacing everything from the steppers out. I'm pretty good with electronics, mechanics and computers, but I have hundreds of hand written Gcode programs I run production with, and can't afford the time to rewrite them all. All my programs are on disc (hard/floppy) and I load them via RS232 at a rockin' 1200 baud using good old PC-TALK. Will the aftermarket software (Mach3, etc) load these old programs directly (without a bunch of edits) and be runable, or am I looking at a lot of rewrites? Any recommendations on which software package would be the most compatible with my old programs?

The BOSS 6 machine has Haas rotary table as a 4th axis. I use M51 to turn control over to the Haas, then the Haas signals the BPT when it's done. Do the newer software packages support M51? I have a production part I have run for 15 years with that setup, and would hate to not have it work.

Should I bite the bullet and fix what I have or end the insanity and pull the plug on the BPT controls? With 2 machines, obviously price is an object, but it seems like a financially sound move (read that affordable) to consider products such as Mach3, CNC4PC C11G board and Gecko drives.

I design in AutoCAD 2002LT and would love to be able to dump the files into something compatible. Thanks for any insight you could send my way!

Cableguy

[unterhaus]

you will probably have to do some minor re-writes for Mach. You might want to ask in the Mach 3 forum because I'm guessing there are people there that would know for sure.

[cabledude]

I'll try my post over at the mach forum.

As a followup, after reading through the hundreds of posts (all of them informative), I got the BOSS 6 running by cleaning the ZDI board. The board is just above the cooling fan and must pull in the (dirty) air from the floor. Isn't there a filter for this one? I cleaned the ERS board on the BOSS 5, but it didn't solve the problem (and I even changed the uart and the related components because they have failed once before), so I thought this cleaning of the boards was overrated. WRONG! Don't overlook the possibility of the "gunk" bridging the leads on the IC's!!! I have used a lot of mist coolant throughout the years, and I guess it has taken its toll. Thanks for all of those informative posts!

FYI - the symtoms were loss of control from the UFP. Mostly sitting waiting for a tool change, but sometimes during a cycle, the panel became unresponsive. No start/continue, no jog, no nothing. A cold restart would normally cure it (temporarily). Sometimes, upon cold restart, the limit light would not come on, although you still had to push the button to clear. This would happen at first only when hot. These machines hate summer. Over a number of months, the problem became more frequent, to the point where the machine became unreliable. Recently, even on colder days (here in beautiful Bridgeport), the machine became useless. Days of monitoring voltages and head scratching got me nowhere...and then I found this site!

However...
My BOSS 5 still won't talk to my "terminal" via rs232, although it will still load a program via - get this - paper tape. Yep...I got into this stuff back in the day of the model 33 Teletype with a tape puncher. Anyone out there ever heard of BASIC, Fortran, Algol, etc? Now you know how old I am!

I still plan on upgrading both machines, but now I can start on the BOSS 5 without leaving me CNC-less. I'd still like to hear from anyone who has done this conversion, and their experiences - good and/or bad. On the surface, it seems like a no-brainer, but all of you know what a can of worms can result!

Thanks again for your reply, unterhaus.

Rob