Camtech Routermaster 25 problems

[DrProton]

I have an old (circa 1999 I think) Camtech routermaster 25 with what I believe is a CMC2 controller. The machine and "black box" seem to be fine but the PC the runs the software is dying. This machine has definitely gone well past it's life expectancy and I'd like to replace it with a new one.

The software we use on this machine is called "TPCwin". I called up camtech (now axyz or some such thing) to see about getting another license for TPCwin. The lady I was speaking with claimed that any new computer must run windows 98 and have an ISA bus as the machine is "locked" to hardware in the computer. This is fine, but here is where it gets confusing.

The computer currently running TCPwin has two ISA slots which are empty. The "black box" is connected directly to the serial port on the motherboard via a serial cable of some sort. I don't know the pinout of this cable but I recall that a standard straight through or null-modem cable did not work. I copied another program called "camplot" from the old dying PC to a relatively new laptop. Using camplot and a usb serial port I was able to download the OS, delete job files, etc. If I tried sending a g-code fill I get an error asking for a license key. There is also no parallel port dongle on the old PC.

What is going on here? Since the old computer has no special ISA hardware, and a new computer can serially communicate to the controller how could it be "locked" to windows 98? Am I missing something? What should I do to upgrade to a newer computer? I'm hoping someone out there has experience with these machines and can help me out.

[jarrodl]

I know this is an old thread and they have probably found an answer by now, but for anyone else searching this, here what I found.
Camtech was a good company,but when AXYZ bought them, they are awful. They are the most unhelpful bunch of people I have ever dealt with. We had a problem similar to the one above and was told they could no longer support the old controller we had, but could upgrade our hardware for about $16,000!

Then I found wincnc.net. They are the ones who did the contoller for camtech originally. For less than $2000 they sold me a new computer with a controller card and software. This interfaced with the stepper controller under my camtech table. They also walked me through setting it up and get me running better than when It was new. Unlike AXYZ, they are Very friendly and helpful. Also if you change over to the new system and would like your old TPCWin software to work with WinXP or Win7, contact me and I will be glad to send you a file to make it work. The old TPCWin software would install on a newer system, but would stop working after some time and give an invalid machine code message. AXYZ then wanted $100 "administrative fee" to generate a new serial number. I did this 4 times before I got it to work without needing their number. The crooks charged me every time.
jarrodl1 at h**mail.com