RDI Input on Boss 5

[kdhBOSS5VRAM]

Does anyone know what the RDI input was originally designed to do on the old Boss 3, 4, 5 and 6 mills? There is really not much mention of it in any of the manuals. I distinctly remember one of the guys playing around with the machine and being able to execute a block of command at a time directly from the CRT editor. I was wondering if that was how it was done. This was back in about 1981 when the machines were new. I asked him recently and he couldn't remember exactly how he did it. He thought it was something with a plug and a jumper and was going to see if he could find anything he had on it. Did anyone else ever hear of this?

[kdhBOSS5VRAM]

I still have not found out the original purpose of the RDI input on the BOSS 5 but I got something to work with it today. I have an old Tape Twin system that hooks into the tape reader plug. I really have no idea how it was suppose to work as I just got it with a lot of spare parts but I hooked it up anyway. The only way I could get it to work was by putting machine in setup and turning switch to RDI then press it. The RDI light on panel lit up, the I hit the load switch in the tape reader compartment then the RDI light went off about 10 seconds later. I then put in Auto, then Restart, Start continue and it started to run machine. The program that I tried was already in the Tape Twin and it was definitely longer than the memory on machine could hold. It was set at 300 baud and the computer was flashing on and off that it was sending info so I guess it would be considered DNC. I'll have to put one of my real long 3D programs in next and see what happens with that.
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Kevin

[kdhBOSS5VRAM]

I got to try the system out with an 80K 3D program tonight. It did run the entire program thru without stopping. I have heard about other systems that load enough program in to fill the memory up then stop and reload more program in. This doesn't seem to work that way. It seems like it loads a line at a time because there is a slight pause between every line (noticeable with the faster feedrates on the 3D profiling but not on the normal milling). I'd be interested to hear from other people who have BTR systems on their machines as to how they work and start them running, if it's similar to this.

Kevin