Hurco BMC 30

[richard mc g]

Hi all, first post so please be gentle !! Has anybody successfully managed to change the floppy drive on a BMC 30 to one of the usb emulator types ??
Something i would definately do if i thought it would work. Any input would be great...........thanks, Richie.....

[underdog]

Ricdhard,

I'm not super familiar with the BMC 30 but I have an older 1980s Hurco. I use RS-232 and a PC and it works great. Have you thought about this?

[richard mc g]

Yes thats an option ok.....Just i've seen these floppy drive emulators on the net and if it worked it would be great to get away from floppy discs once and for all. I have just ordered one today, so i'll keep you posted on how it goes.....here's hoping

[GT390]

Hi Richard, I am very interested in this option, I have a Hurco KMB-1x, and was thinking of trying the USB / Floppy Emulator route, seems weird plugging an emulator into an emulator though, keep us posted on your progress...

[richard mc g]

Ok so i tried this. It tries to read it, the light flashes on it and then says ' cannot find device ' I tried formatting the pen on the machine and still no joy. I gave up after a while and put the old drive back in. Colin at B&H is going to take a look for me. Might be missing something. BTW, i have spares for a KMB if you're intrested ? 3 motors, cards and a complete control unit. I stripped all these off my old one before i scrapped it ..........Richie.

[bloke]

Give young Colin a slap for me. I think he was looking at these USB drives a while back when I was speaking to him.

[richard mc g]

If i can get a hold of him i will `!! Hard man to get hold of sometimes, even though he only lives a mile or two from my machine shop........

[GT390]

I have read that the usb / floppy emulator needs the pen drive to be formatted into multiple 720K partitions, BUT a guy on ebay is selling these for brother sewing machines, which also ran 720K discs, the emulator has a digital display and you can select which partion you want to read from, up to 100 x 720K partitions can be created and selected, the seller claims that a standard pen drive can be used, and no other software needed, I wonder if this would work in a Hurco ???????

Is your usb drive like this Ritchie, does it have the digital number display on the front panel like this one ???

Geeee, it would be great if we could figure out how to make this work

720Kb Floppy Emulator for Brother embroidery machine on eBay (end time 08-Dec-10 18:53:22 GMT)

[richard mc g]

Thats the one alright. It came with an SD card which fits into a USB adaptor.....i tried formatting to 720 and 1.4 on the machine itself and still got no joy ? I'll have to experiment a little more with it, to get away from floppy discs would be great. It can still only emulate one discs worth at a time though, so for large NC files it would still need top be split up, or sent in from PC ........

[richard mc g]

Got this to work at last. Bit of playing around and...bingo ! I found that if i pull the power supply to the emulator, then power it up again.....it works fine. Pull out the pen and reinsert it and it will not recognise it again ??? So i put a little toggle switch on the power wire to the emulator and fixed it to the side of the control . Now i switch it off, then back on , insert the pen and off it goes. I can live with that.........no more floppy discs !!