archiving programs on floppies/desktops

[chipsinpan]

My older Partners have only 2 places to save programs : in the machine control
and on floppies .
I am probably not the only one who has paranoid visions of losing all the time spent to write programs , so here is my quick , cheap back up .
Just for the fun of it , I plugged a program disc into my old win98 A: drive , and to my delight , it read it with no problem . Saved them all as text files that will open in WORDPAD. It saves each program as 2 seperate files . One has a P in front . ( run file and edit file ?).
So I guess in the worst case , I could print out the one legible copy , and manually input it back into the machine control .
Someone tell me if there is a better way . If I edit the copy in my desk top , will the control recognize the changes ?
Thanks ,
Bob

[dlenardu]

I actually had that happen to me, I had been meaning to save all my programs to a floppy but kept putting it off. Then I had a problem with the simdisk and after talking to milltronics we had to reformatt the drive and I lost all of my programs. Needless to say I now save them to a floppy as soon as I get done writing them. Milltronics told me that the "p" file was the conversational program and the "o" was the actual g-code. Now I save them to a floppy and then I save them to a folder on my computer. That way if something happens I can just pop in the floppy and load the programs back up. I have not tried to edit the programs on the computer and reload them so I'm not sure if that will work or not

[single phase]

The "O" files are not g-code exactly, they are a milltronics macro language (I do not know what they really call it). This macro language is a super set of the "milltronics" standard for g-code.

When you write a program in the milltronics conversational editor screens they get compiled into the "O" files. Then later when you run the program it is the "O" file that is actually executed.

You can not edit either of these files with the intent of keeping them together. However you can manually edit the "O" files and make your own programs, I recommend you rename the file so it does not get rewritten over if you later open the "P" file in the conversational editor.

Cheers
SF

[chipsinpan]

I do have the offline software that allows me to write programs .
If I can remember how to copy that file from my home XP to floppy , then load that into my shop 98 machine , then I can just save them in the same conversational suite , and write /edit like I do on the machine control .
Is that correct ?
Only one snafu is that my 2 Partners have different levels of software , and one will shut itself down if I load a program that has a drill cycle .
I keep running into this problem when I swap programs between the two , so I have to remember to write new programs on the older control as they seem to be forward compatible , but not backward .
Thanks
Bob

[chipsinpan]

Lucky me , I had my old DOS hacker buddy visit , and he loaded the offline simulator program I had laying around on a floppy .
Since I have 2 Partner 2's that both have Cent 5 , but different levels of software , we loaded the pgm twice ( one for each machine ).
So now I transferred all my programs from the control to a floppie , and floppie to my win98, and all is good .
I am not sure , but I think you can download the program from your params file ,
then load it into your PC .Then the PC screen looks just like the control , and I can write/edit any program I want .
Who says old 98 PCs are junk ? Also handy when I want to generate bolt circle coordinates for my manual mill with DRO .
Thanks , Bob