New member hello and question about eztrak

[Speedbird]

Hello all! Great site! 41 yr old aviation machinist for 20yrs now.
The problem:
Our 1993 ez trak sx is not booting up correctly. It was shut down over the weekend (as usual), turned on this morning and now will not finish booting. When booting, it gets to a sreen that counts down to zero,then it won't let you do anything.From searching the forum, I have learned about the battery backup. Just to be sure, is this the approx. 6"x6" box in the upper left corner? If so, I don't see any corrosion coming from it. I've been here 5 years, but nobody ever remembers it being replaced. Also found a post from Machintek about pulling it from its ISA slot and clean the edge connector and/or try a different slot.????
"It is aslo possible that the software is corrupted or the media(hard drive,floppy,disk a chip, disk on a module,flash card) is having diffculty being read either because CMOS may not be correct or age." Could this be explained in any simplier terms.

Thanks for any help.

[NC Cams]

Simple explanation. FInd a computer geek who knows DOS and have them look at it.

Or,

The box in corner is power supply. THe battery is soldered o the motherboard of computer just about anyplace. Can be either a wafer cell about the size of a quarter/50 cent piece. or a small "log of nicads" with log lying on the side just about anyplace. Look for corroded board if you find it. If so, Plan on new M/B soon..

If battery goes dead, you lose CMOS memory. Lose CMOS, the thing "forgetts that it had a HDD and were it might be. YOu have to then figure out CMOS as I"m sure it was not recorded. If your documentation was backed up properly dig it out and simply key in the right Cmos settings.

Tell the computer geek to mount a regular keyboard to the motherboard inside the cabinet. Reboot machine, hit F8 while booting. THis well get him to CMOS for inspection or reset..

If CMOS is Ok, you may have HDD issues developeing. Load DOS, run DEFRAG and or SCAN DISK. YOUre geek can do this in his sleep. Caution, this may have been deleted to save space. SImple copay and paste from DOS box and these programs will fix a lot of stuff. You may need to relaod your OS, You do have backups don't you????

YOu're choices are to replace backup battery or Look for a new m/b if battery is the problem.

New M'/B must have ISA slots and it should NOT be over 133mhz in speed.

BMDC card is found in an ISA slot, it is about 12 inches long, is what's running your machine.

next to it may be I/O card for HDD/FDD and maybe even VGA card for video. clean them too. Geek should find/identify these even if he's nearly blind.

Lots of this stuff is found in "dos for dummies". Sadly, kids don't build PC's anymore. THis is all simple stuff to geeks who build DOS computers.

finally, if you need new motherboard, go used compter shopping. any 386, 486, 586/Pentium that runs at 133mhz or slower should do just fine. BUy several as they are all but imposible to find/buy new anymore.


SImple enough????

[Speedbird]

Computer whiz coming tomorrow. Will post findings.

[NC Cams]

Suggest hte whiz apply resistive load to P/S. Voltage drop out of P/S can cause similar issues.

IF HDD is going soulth, you can't just put in a massive HDD and run. THre are tricks tothis too. IT iws atually better to use a DOM. Again, formatting tricks apply. Looking forward to the whiz's verdict.

[Speedbird]

CMOS looks good no hard drive installed actually runs on ramdrive. There is no b3t.exe on the disk so if someone has a copy if they could zip it and email it to me? IT person would like to test the bmdc next.

[Panther101]

My ez trak is doing the same thing and havn't been able to start the drives. It too runs off flash card. Did you get the file you needed I may need that too if you could send it please. I tested the battery and it looks OK. Before all this happened I soldered the end of the remote, is it possible something shorted out.

[Speedbird]

NC Cams---any insight about ramdrive and lack of b3t.exe files?
Any help would be greatly appreciated>

[Hogface]

By chance, did you get it going?
I just rebuilt my Eztrak and may be able to help.

[Speedbird]

Not yet. Any help will be appreceiated.

[Hogface]

Ok here goes my try...may not work but hey, it's free....need a few questions answered first.

Ok, first off, does the machine have a working floppy?

Second, i understand from your post that it has a flash drive. Correct?

By chance do you have a FULL keyboard that we can plug in the back of the control console? Should be some round plugs on the back of the monitor...

***Do at your own risk **** Live voltages can Kill ****

turn the machine off
Open the cabinet on the back if you want
touch NOTHING

Identify the bmdc card, it is the long computer card....

Post a picture if in doubt and I can help you identify it.

It should be a card that is plugged into the computer mother board. The mother board is mounted on the back wall. The bmdc card is about 4" by 11" with two small red lights.
it should be in the lower left corner, you can also identify it b/c it has two flat 2" wide cables leaving from it to other boards that are mounted on the bottom of the cabinet.

Power on the unit and watch the two red lights.
**DONT touch anything voltages are live and can kill ***
Just observe the bmdc card.
The red lights should should blink.
The computer will boot. Have someone watch the monitor while you watch the bmdc blinking lights...
Do the red leds go off?
Or does the "bmdc" count concluded and the lights still on...

Sorry, just trying to understand a few things first.
Don't forget to shut the cabinet and keep people out of the live voltages.

[Panther101]

The board lights flash on. The controller counts down, but does not start up. It used to start up after countdown (I could here the motors turn on). I have the keyboards for it too checked all the cmos and am not quite sure if it is correct. It seems to be as far as I can tell.

[Hogface]

Do the lights go off when the count down is complete?

If not, please put the key board into the keyboard jack on the back.

Restart the machine by turning the power off.

After the post stuff, start hitting:
<ctl><break>

We want a "terminate batch job Y/N"
Answer yes.
If you get the bmdc count down, you've got to start over b/c we've gone to far...
Make sense?