boss 6 communicating

[timprebleco]

Guy's
I have a Bridgeport Series II boss 6 mill. I have been programming it with a pc and BOBCAD. I have lost the ability to communicate from the pc to the mill. I did an upgrade on the rs232 jack and cable a few months back. Every thing was working fine. The mill still works and excepts MDI programming from the control pannel. I have looked over the cable the ends and the new jack in the machine everything seems to be ok. I have reinstalled the software in the pc and checked the com1 port settings. I have pulled off the controll pannel and checked that the edit switch is still working. Is there anything else that I can check, before searching for another board? I really need to get this fixed.
Thank you for your help.
Tim

[JKENIK]

Might be a long shot, but I had to put a new serial board in a pc and when I did so, it would not connect with the mill. I'm using a different mill and software, but sounds like a similar problem. The answer was to slow down the baud rate in my milling software. The mill was "older" and the serial card was the latest and there was just enough of a difference that they would not connect. I still have to keep flippng online and offline, sometimes half a dozen times, when I boot up, but once I have it, I'm good until I shut down again. I have since been told that some brands have better communications than others and this is not an uncommon problem. Before doing anything drastic, I would ONCE AGAIN replace the cable--sometimes they do go bad.

[timprebleco]

Thanks, I have restarted and tried multiple times and no luck. I will get the pc and cable looked at by my local computer store. As far as I know nothing changed on the pc end. Every thing else is working on the pc and the mill.
Tim

[jharts1]

my BOO-V has the same exact story,used a 386 for 10 yrs and then the 386 died and i never found the pc back up battery, and i still can't get a connection wih my new pen-III
not a nibble, i think the BOSS's I/O board is bad, if their is any help in phoenix, please send me a note? hartmann,,,602-278-1765

[jharts1]

a bad cable would be too obvious, a bad chip(ACIA) would be a better quest,
or a bad I/O chip,how to test them is a different story, hartmann,,,

[jharts1]

the chips in the mill have date codes on them, but they are probably way older than any PC, so con sider what heat does to chips and your answer maybe bad I/O chips or they may be CMOS chips, even more sensitive to heat than MOS TTL's, so dats my op. hartmann,,

[timprebleco]

Learning something new every day! A freind said try and older computer.
It is the Windows Opperating System, XP & Vista are not real compatible with old Dos Programs. I went and bought an Old Win 98 computer set it up and now I am back in business. I bet that is why my old HP Pen Plotter does not work right with my new Vista computer. I will ceck it out as soo as I get caught up on my work.