Need Help!- Dead Acramatic 2100

[akram]

Hello all,

sorry for reposting this but I think this is the right place for this thread

I have an old Cincinnati Vickers Acramatic 2100 CNC Machine,

first I got the Bridge Board failure so I toke the HD attached it to an XP machine(which killed the file system) made an image and started to fight to make it work again

I had to rebuild the OS and copy everything over so Back to the first error again

While loading the Vickers acramatic software it checks for all the attached hardware

It fails in the test "Bridge Board (WS)"

then of course fails in loading the programs to the RT in the step : NC Engine base

If you take the RT "Real Time" motherboard off the previous test is passed OK

I guess there was some settings on the bios of the RT motherboard to make it accessible from the bridge board

I already attached it (RT) to a power supply and a VGA card and changed the default settings to disable Floppy drive and disable halt on errors so now it boots fine (previously it wasn't booting and a red led on the bridge board was always on)

is there any other settings to be done on the bridge board

we have changed the bios batteries for both motherboards with new ones, the WS one was died and that was clear from the date reset and the machine was working for a while until that first error occurred

I even tried to revert to older version of the installed application but got the same errors

Any help or redirection is appreciated

Regards,
Akram

[tricky]

Blxxdy hell !

You are screwed.

The bios settings on the motherboard are read by the A2100 application software and if they are not spot on it will be just like the board not being there.

You cant just plug a monitor/psu/keyboard into that motherboard and change settings etc without it screwing things up. you need to download new settings directly into the bios, which is not something you and I can do.
Even a dead battery will screw up either one of your pc motherboards in your a2100 control.

the little 2 wire lead that goes from your motherboard thats on the far right hand side of the a2100 rack that plugs into the bridge board is very important, make sure its plugged in.

The bridge board is might expensive
your best option for spares might be Siemens in the USA as they took over vickers.

I don't know what your machine is like but an arrow 500 with A2100 to a UK based dealer is only worth £4,000.

You could easily spend that fixing yours.

Their was a guy on ebay sellying A2100 hard drives with pre-installed firmware on, until you have a working hard drive I wouldn't want to trust what the error messages say when the machine boots up.

If you want to break it up for spares let me know !

[aLeXs]

que tal Akram

1. El HD es independiente de las funciones de las tarjetas WSB RTB y BB el disco duro no era el problema.
2."we have changed the bios batteries for both motherboards with new ones, the WS one was died and that was clear from the date reset and the machine was working for a while until that first error occurred" cometiste un grave error al retirar las baterias de la mother board nunca debiste hacerlo pues borraste la informacion del BIOS , ahora tendras que enviarlo a siemes para que reparen tu tarjeta, el costo anda alrededor de los 600 USD. no conozco otra forma de conseguir la informacion que tu bios traía y cargarla de nuevo .

Im Sorry

Alex
Saltilo Mexico

[jeff238]

Scott (don't know his last name) in Ohio
Ph 1 (216) 789-3808
He helped a friend of mine get his arrow 750 going. He had a "bridge board failure" too. It wasn't a board failure at all, just a hard drive failure. Probably all your files are still on the drive, his were. You can put it in a PC and just boot from it. If it won't boot, just use it as a second drive, and boot off the original.
good luck
Jeff

[Cgaul]

We recently got a Benchman mill with an Acramatic 2100 controller that currently won't boot. It powers up, but Windows NT won't load - it can't find the WINNT directory ("Disk I/O Error: 00001000", etc).

I've opened it up and pulled out the harddisk; after installing it in a PC and looking at it with PartitionMagic, I see it has two partitions, a FAT partition with the WinNT loader and a loader for the Mustang software, and a NTFS partition that actually has the OS and software. As near as I can tell, this is why it isn't booting (it's trying to boot from the FAT partition that doesn't actually contain NT) - but why is that partition even there? Can I safely remove it with PartitionMagic, or does the controller software require it for some reason?

Thanks for any clarification anyone can offer.

[tricky]

Originally Posted by Cgaul We recently got a Benchman mill with an Acramatic 2100 controller that currently won't boot. It powers up, but Windows NT won't load - it can't find the WINNT directory ("Disk I/O Error: 00001000", etc). I've opened it up and pulled out the harddisk; after installing it in a PC and looking at it with PartitionMagic, I see it has two partitions, a FAT partition with the WinNT loader and a loader for the Mustang software, and a NTFS partition that actually has the OS and software. As near as I can tell, this is why it isn't booting (it's trying to boot from the FAT partition that doesn't actually contain NT) - but why is that partition even there? Can I safely remove it with PartitionMagic, or does the controller software require it for some reason? Thanks for any clarification anyone can offer.

Oh Dear !,

A2100 hard drives use NTFS
by reading in a pc which isn't NTFS eg: a XP machine, you might have screwed it up.

If you get windows NT4 OS and set up an old pc on it, it is then safe to examine your iffy hard drive.

I would try and borrow a hard drive from some one else with a similar machine and use something like Acronis to clone it.

your programs are stored in c:\mustang\user
don't delete the other partition !

A2100's will either only support <2gb or ,10gb hard drives if they have the later motherboards.

A hard drive image from an Arrow will not work in your machine because all the machine data will be wrong.

If those files are ok on you drive then you might be in luck, if you can borrow another A2100 drive from someone else.
You will also have to sort out the control serial number , because there is a little pcb which plugs onto the bridge board (back plane) which has a flash chip and the only thing it contains is your machine control serial number.
The software on your hard drive checks this.

Hope this was some help