Milltronics simdisk?

[borne2fly]

What exactly is a simdisk? I have a 1996 Cent 1 controller, and it contains a floppy, a "simdisk", a pile of memory chips (RAM?), and a battery which I suppose is intended to keep the RAM from forgetting everything.

I got a few disks with the machine, these have all the parameters. I guess these parameters eventually reside in the RAM.

Cent 1 seems to be a DOS based operating system, but I have no "boot" disk. Was that an oversight, or does this operating system reside on the "simdisk"? Which I'm guessing is nothing but jargon for good old-fashioned ROM?
If this simdisk takes a dump, and if the operating system resides on it, whaddya do? Is there any way to copy the operating system onto ANYTHING else ...... up to and including pulling the ROMs off the board, scanning them, and burning a few backup spares?
Aside from the simdisk, does the Cent 1 controller contain any other freak components (at the chip level) that cannot be simply replaced with over-the-counter parts from an electronics supplier? To me, freak parts are an invitation for modification, ..... they do not belong in tools, weapons, or pacemakers

[ZZZZ]

The simdisk is a 'disk simulator' card in the card cage. It is the full length card with no wires plugged into it.

The simdisk card has several functions:
1. It has a chip that interrupts the cmos boot sequence and re-assigns drive letters to the memory chips on the card.
2. The twelve ROM chips with the labels. These are the A:\ drive and have been burned to contain the operating system and the control software.
3. There are four, eight, twelve, or more RAM chips that are the B:\ drive. The a:\shell.exe can format the drive as well as setting the paths and other things. The B: drive has the RAM directory with the parameter files and the PARTS directory has the part programs.

The floppy disks you have are likely back-up copies of the RAM directory.

[borne2fly]

zzzz,
Keep talking, I'm learning! This is the nuts & bolts stuff I like to know.

Have you heard of anyone burning copies of those twelve ROMs? If they contain the operating system, then it would be a crying shame if they died.

[ZZZZ]

I've never seen one of those ROM chips go bad, but I guess anything is possible.

You can copy all the files from the A: drive and the B: drive put them on a hard drive.
Configure everything correctly and you can pull the simdisk card out of the card cage entirely. Rarely, you can have read/write problems, and remember that ALL hard drives die eventually.

On newer Cent 6, all Cent 7, and updated Cent1/5 controls, there is no simdisk, everything is loaded on a Disk-on-Chip or Compact Flash chips.

[borne2fly]

You mean .... replace the simdisk ROMs with an actual hard drive? Not sure if I'd know how to do that. And I'd still need to find a way to access the ROM contents and get it all on the hard drive. By the time all this was done, I wonder if I'd be better off just getting an upgraded mother board?

On another note ..... getting a laptop to talk to the RS232. I just got a Dell XP laptop with a DB9 port and a 25 pin printer port. I've been told I can use the DB9 with Hyperterminal and a null modem at the mill end, where the null modem also serves as a 9-pin to 25-pin connector to match up with the one on the mill. Well .... I'm wondering if I can use the 25 pin port instead. I already have a 25 pin cable that connects to both the mill and laptop, and it would make life very easy if this could work. Is this a possibility? If so, how do I go about configuring the 25 pin port?

[ZZZZ]

The hard drive is a lot less expensive than a motheroard to single-board-computer upgrade, the biggest issue with the HDD is finding a drive small enough for the CMOS to recognize it. To get the files from the A: drive to the hard drive, just copy them to floppies and then back to the HDD.

If everything is working okay now, why not copy all the files to floppies to get a back-up and wait until you need them?

The 25 pin connection on your laptop will not work, you have to use the 9 pin serial port.
Use a 9-to-25 adapter at the laptop if you want to use a 25 pin cable.
You may not need the null modem, some machines have it built in.

Go to the CTRL parameters to set the baud rate, etc. to match the settings in your communications software.

Good luck, sometimes it's really a PIA to get them talking to each other.

[borne2fly]

>> To get the files from the A: drive to the hard drive, just copy them to floppies and then back to the HDD.

I didn't know I could access the ROM codes. From the keypad on the mill I can access DOS mode, but without knowing how to get :\ etc, I couldn't really navigate the directory structure. Today I spoke with Milltronics and they gave me the "special codes" to get : and \ via the keypad, and also informed me that I can drive DOS with an external keyboard that plugs into the side of the monitor (I'm a newbie at all this system stuff). Turns out I have an old keyboard with a matching connector. Tomorrow I'll see what I can copy from A:
Thanks for the info and encouragement! I'll have it working soon.

[ZZZZ]

The shift-period for the colon and shift-minus sign for the backslash aren't really a secret. The rest of the numeric keypad keys have shifted characters as well, they just don't have much use.

Something else that might interest you:

To replace Front Panel buttons using a PC keyboard:

Alt+F1 Spindle Stop
Alt+F2 E-Stop
Alt+F3 Clockwise
Alt+F4 Feed Hold
Alt+F5 CounterClockwise
Alt+F6 Cycle Start
Alt+F7 Mist
Alt+F8 Tool Reset
Alt+F9 Flood
Alt+F10 Reset (may have to press the Reset button at the same time)


Feed Rate Over-ride Spindle Over-ride
Alt+A 0% Alt+1 0%
Alt+S 10% Alt+2 10%
Alt+D 20% Alt+3 20%
Alt+F 30% Alt+4 30%
Alt+G 40% Alt+5 40%
Alt+H 50% Alt+6 50%
Alt+J 60% Alt+7 60%
Alt+K 70% Alt+8 70%
Alt+Z 80% Alt+Q 80%
Alt+X 90% Alt+W 90%
Alt+C 100% Alt+E 100%
Alt+V 110% Alt+R 110%
Alt+B 120% Alt+T 120%
Alt+N 130% Alt+Y 130%
Alt+M 140% Alt+U 140%

These can be used if you are having trouble with the front panel buttons or the over-ride switches.

[borne2fly]

I'll add this to all the other documentation that should have come with the machine but didn't Thanks again!

[sportybob]

born2fly, ZZZZ is correct on the basic function of the "SimDisk" card. They are a very reliable way to get and keep electronics data. They do have a couple of drawbacks in today's PC world. 1. few came with the then max of 256Kb of memory, (76Kb was standard) Using conversational programming 76K was more then enough to have 100 or so programs on hand. I have rarely seen a conversational program over 1 possible 2 Kb long. The conversational programing is very small and tight code. It is based on parametric programming and it is why the conversational works so well.
2. In today's world of cad/cam programs they can reach 20 - 30 Mb very easily. When the older Milltronics controls were built, These Cad/Cam programs did not exist. Milltronics has done a pretty good job of updating the controls for "today's" technologies. They were far advanced from what was out there from other controls. The RS 232 used in the older controls do not support (FIFO - first in first out buffers) they did not exist back then. When using hyperterminal go into the advanced settings and turn off the FIFO buffers. Then the RS-232 will default to a "older" standard.
3. when the available memory gets full it will either ask you to delete some programs or end up booting to DOS, where you have to reformat the SRAM.

The use of a hard drive in a machine that can vibrate and move in IHO is not the way to go. As ZZZZ said they do fail. If you do add a hard drive it will need to be formatted to 40Mb (DOS 3.2 limit) or 2Gb if you get DOS 6.22
all C1 and C5 simdisks had DOS 3.2 C6 controls had DOS 6.22

Updating the control with a SBC update does add a lot of function and features and make use of more of today's technologies. They will remove the Simdisk and use an internal (64Mb CF disk standard or a 256Mb CF as an option) network option can either be netbeui or TCP/IP. or RS232 would have the FIFO. There is also an option of adding a "multi disk" drive to replace the floppy. This drive will accept several of the "newer" high density memory cards

I know of no other control that is so easy to update and at a reasonable cost. (call FANUC USA and ask them what it costs to add networking)
Compare to a Milltronics SBC update with networking.

guys who are running the "SLS" software may want to update to the CNC software, It adds some conversational programming functions that they may fund useful.

I hope you find this info useful, more info if needed, just ask.

sportybob

[bwilkinson]

I'm working with a friend who has a VM16 running Centurion 6, on a P133 motherboard and the simdisk. We would like to add networking capability to it, and unfortunately since autoexec.bat is on the ROM portion of the simdisk, that isn't possible with this configuration.

Now, I know that the best method would be to update to the SBC, simply the cash isn't there to do so right now. So, my thought was to place an IDE to Compact Flash adapter in (I am aware that physical hard drives are taboo in CNC machines), with a 2 gig compact flash card (it's running DOS 6.22) and copying everything over to the CF card. Then, we could add in a simple PCI network card, and set up networking.

Has anybody tried this route?

[sportybob]

bwilkerson, The short answer is yes it will work. you can boot to the CF drive then use a "call statement" to the simdisk. or copy every thing from the simdisk to the CF drive and run from there.
In either case you will need to know about DOS and config.sys and autoexec.bat files.
If running from the Cf drive, you will also need to edit the tool change macro in the power parameters to point to the new macro location.
all the drive locations in the autoexec.bat file will need to be changed
rom, ram, ram drive, floppy, network and boot drive.
There is another thread in the Milltronics section that gives some info on installing a hard drive, It is similar to that.
I am not sure that I want to write a 5-6 page installation "how to" so I am leaving this as the "short answer".

Sportybob