Centurion V won't boot up

[DEAN-O]

Hello,

I'm new to cnc and just bought a Supermax mill with a Centurion control.
I had the machine running a simple program one evening and everything seemed fine, shut it down and went to restart it the next morning and it would not boot up right. It comes to a screen that says:

Centurion V system shell version 1.12
copyright 1991
sram (B freespace = -1

*A:\>

When I hit F1 and then check the sram I get a message that says
"General failure error reading drive B"

I found the battery on the board and checked it with a voltmeter and found it to have 4.6 volts, looks like it might have been replaced.

If anyone can help me with this I would greatly appreciate it!
Thanks, DEAN-O

[trevj1]

Same boat as you. I've got the shop machine turned on, in hopes that there is another battery that will take a charge somewhere.
Exact same messages.
IIRC the last time I ran into start-up issues, I reloaded the saved parameters off the disk, and it fixed things up.

Gotta brush up on my DOS commands again.

Yours been turned off for a while? Ours was powered down over Christmas, about 10 days,more or less.

Ugh!

Cheers
Trev

[jpawelk]

The SRAM Freespace = -1 alarm can be caused by several things:
1.) Simdisk battery dead. The battery should measure 3.6VC, if not replace the battery.
2.) One or more of the capacitors on the simdisk have failed and/or leaked. Repair of the simdisk would be required.
3.) Simdisk board is defective. Replacement of the simdisk is then required.

I hope some of this helps you.

[trevj1]

Thanks!

I'll start with a meter, and pull the board to have a look to see what can be seen.

A quick check of the battery shows a little crusty corosion n one of the leads, so maybe worth a deeper look.

Cheers
Trev

[trevj1]

So. Battery is kacked. Less than 2 volts for the couple seconds that it held it's charge for.

Any info on the pinouts for J10, the external battery connector, would be a help!

The jumper to switch from internal to external battery is clearly marked.

Just guessing, but if I jumper over to the external setting, I should get a voltage off the correct pins to connect the new battery to, yes? Figuring that the new battery will recieve a charge from the Mobo while the box is 'running'.

I'll blunder through and see what comes up!

Thanks!

Cheers
Trev

[trevj1]

Found the battery on the SimDisk board, spoken of above. Flatlined. Trying to find one.

The CMOS battery on the MoBo was crusty. External battery sorted that, but did not fix the simdisk issue.


LTC-7P Keeper II, FWIW.

Cheers
Trev

[DEAN-O]

I hate to sound like a complete idiot, but which board is the simdisk? I found the short round battery on the bottom of the board at the back of the cabinet and it measures 3.6V. I haven't found the other battery yet nor do I know what it looks like. Help!!!!!!!!!! Want to try to avoid a trip to Milltronics if possible. Thanks, Dean-o

[trevj1]

Short round one at the bottom of the board, is the motherboard Real Time Clock battery.

The Simdisk is one of the long boards (off the top of my head, the third board over, from the left) secured in place by a screw at the bottom. I had to remove one ribbon connector, and a two conductor lead marked "keyboard" to access the simDisk board. If you look at it's surface with a flashlight, pretty much the whole thing is little rectangular IC chips. About half the SimDisk chips on ours had paper labels marking the version on them.

The battery is located at the same end as the screw and retainer plate/bracket thingie on the end of the card. It is a black rectangle without any "legs" out it's sides. The polarity is marked, as is the part number and name, as per my last post.

From what I could see, the changeout will require desoldering 4 points, two of which are the terminals.

http://ca.mouser.com/search/ProductD...nu%252btznWw==

Cheers
Trev