Conect cnc milling machine

[seahog]

Hi Everybody: I'm new to the forums so bear with me if I've posted this in the wrong place. I acquired a Conect cnc milling machine....a Contour Major. The manufacturer is long since out of business and documentation for the machine is non-existent. The mill uses a db9 rs232 serial connection to the pc and is controlled by an old Dos software program. Communications between pc and mll is currently pretty much hit and miss. I've been running under the Dos command prompt from windows XP with the com port settings at both default (8n1, 9600b) and with FIFO either off or receive at 4 and transmit at 1 (maybe that's the other way round...can't remember) Anyway it simply doesn't work. Does anyone know what the port settings are supposed to be for this machine? Any wiring diagrams? BTW I'm using a straight thru cable, i.e. 1-1, 2-2 etc. Is this the correct cabling? I'm getting fairly p****d off with this thing so any help would be much appreciated.

[ger21]

It may not work from the DOS prompt in XP. Can you install plain DOS on a PC and try it. I know that DOS parallel port programs will not work in XP, perhaps serial ports are the same??

[seahog]

Originally Posted by ger21 It may not work from the DOS prompt in XP. Can you install plain DOS on a PC and try it. I know that DOS parallel port programs will not work in XP, perhaps serial ports are the same??

Hi Gerry, thanks for the response. I hadn't mentioned it in my original post but I did set up the program to run in Win95 compatibility mode. I also adjusted the environmental variables to what I thought it might want to see, but it's entirely possible it's just one of those Dos programs that will not run under XP. The thing that gets me is that it sorta works (I have manual control of all the axis which I would not have on this machine without a sucessful software link). The spindle will not operate until the axis are set to datum which the software currently will not allow me to do (hangs). I had thought if I knew for sure that the port settings and cabling were correct and it still wasn't working then I'd go looking for an old 486 PC.