Floppy to USB Converter install

[Ken_Shea]

Received the converter today, it took only 4 days from the time of shipping to get here in Ohio from India.
It was packed well with no visible damage.
Purchased from
Kwality Enterprises
80, Queen's Road
Near Hotel Suncity Towers,
Amritsar (Punjab,India).143001
Ph: 0183-2224554, Fax:0183-5005595
(m): +919780485865

email
Vishal Chohan
vishal@keindia.com

Install was pretty straight forward, the unit replaces the 3.5" drive.
There was a little pin confusion shown in the photo.
Vishal's solution was to just press the ribbon cable a bit harder and it will unblock that pin, which it did.


Formatting of the flash drive was pretty straight forward as well, the usual issues of not really knowing what was expected but all went well on this and the install after just a couple inquireing email, all answered promptly.

Each flash drive is formatted into the equivalent of 100 3.5" Floppies.
These 100 (0-99) blocks of floppy equivalents can be accessed from the converter at the control.

To save files to these block from the PC requires a separate program that is included with the converter purchase, this software also formats the Flash drive.
True, an extra step is required to save data on each individual block from your PC, but it is quick and uncomplicated.
You have the equivalent of 100 floppies on the flash drive (a 4gb is recommended) so you must remember on what block your CNC Post is on.

So now, hopefully, all those many trips back to the PC to reload the post onto yet another floppy will be a thing of the past.

It worked well on first use, time will tell on the full scope of it's use and reliability.

Now, what to do with 4 cases of floppies

Ken

[dingo0722]

So are you saying that if you had a post that we equivalent to 100 floppy disks, you have to brake up that program into 100 pieces in order to save it to the flash drive?

[Ken_Shea]

Originally Posted by dingo0722 So are you saying that if you had a post that we equivalent to 100 floppy disks, you have to brake up that program into 100 pieces in order to save it to the flash drive?

Yes, the flash drive is now formatted to 100 blocks, each block like a separate floppy.

Many controls that used the old 3.5" have 1mb, and much less on even older machines, my Haas TM-1 has 1mb so it is a good match for these machines.

This was designed as an alternative to the generally unreliable floppies and so far seems to do a great job

If one was able to drip feed from the USB, now that would sure be nice.

[dingo0722]

So my machine has 4MB memory, could I set this up into only 25 blocks?

[Ken_Shea]

Doesn't seem likely, as the control still is expecting to be reading a 1.44mb floppy.

If you have post on say block 00 and 99 then you would have to be sure the converter is showing which one you want to read from, or save two. That is what the two numbers indicate, you go up or down in blocks by pushing one of two buttons.


EDIT:
This is not a converter short coming, it is the way the control or PC is requiring.

[ckirchen]

Originally Posted by dingo0722 So are you saying that if you had a post that we equivalent to 100 floppy disks, you have to brake up that program into 100 pieces in order to save it to the flash drive?

If you have a program that is larger than 1 floppy, you could connect the RS232 port to a PC. The cable is cheap, especially if you make your own, and DNC software is free for download on the web.

[dingo0722]

we use the RS232 now. Often as a buffered input. I was hoping threre was a way to elimiate that by using a usb thumb drive, but it appears this is not the case

[jackson]

I would like to see a simple floppy converted into a usb reader should be simple and cost effective.... but I have not found anything of the sort

[KenFoulks]

Check out this other thread:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/haas_m..._machines.html