John R. Carroll wrote:
David R.Birch wrote:
John R. Carroll wrote:
David R.Birch wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
"David R.Birch" wrote:
Michael A. Terrell wrote:

What is the advantage of these drives over, say, a 32 GB jump
drive at $70 (this week at Office Depot)? Speed? If so, how
great is that advantage in practice?
They replace the hard drive in a computer. Someone was asking
about small hard drives for machine tools. Spinning storage with
an IDE/PATA interface is disappearing from the market. What good
is a jump drive on something with no USB port?
We have that problem at work. Our newer Mitsubishi LASER CNC
control runs on Win95. The only network option is a PCMCIA reader
and LAN card in the reader. We installed the hardware and got the
control to recognize a laptop running Win2KPro, and vice versa,
but so far, we haven't gotten drive access to allow us to
transfer files back and forth.
These are a huge improvement over the old 28 pin 'M-Drive' we
used to run embedded NT in one product about 10 years ago. They
are a lot larger, too. They were $380 for a 32 MB soft drive.

If your CNC will run with one of the formats that Windows can
use, you can format the solid state drive & install the software,
then just plug it into the CNC machine. You could even make a
duplicate drive to use for troubleshooting or emergency repairs.
It's cheap production insurance at those prices.
Right now we'd be happy if we could load files from anything other
than the failing floppy drive. The control has a db25 serial port,
but for some reason, Mitsubishi decided that just being able to
transfer files with a COM program shouldn't work.
You have to properly select the I/O devices in the parameters David.
Which control is it?
5x10' LZP with LC20B control

Here's a pic of the control:

http://www.meridianmachinery.com/photos/1730_1.jpg


That looks like a 530 control but you might also have the dreaded "Magic 64"
which is an M64 with a PC front end.
They had a hard drive and a floppy and ran '95 in the early models and then
NT later on. You can upgrade the older ones.

This one runs Win95. Internally, it doesn't have a standard
motherboard and I see nothing resembling ISA or PCI slots.

Does the control boot Windows when you power it up?

Yes. Since I installed the PCMCIA LAN adapter, I get a screen that
asks for a password. The operators have been told NOT to enter
anything, just hit INPUT or whatever the equivalent of ENTER is.

Your problem, if you have a Magic, will be device drivers.

How would I identify a Magic 64?

Get the Ethernet adapter working. You can take any ISA Ethernet adapter and
put it in the mother board on these things and then configure your
connection through the Windows control panel.

No slots, ISA or PCI.

You can send programs to the machine memory using your RS232 port but you
will need to flip the control to the Mits side and do the transfer there. Do
it the same way you would on a 520A-MR. Then save the program to the hard
drive.

What is the 520A-MR, some sort of BTR device? A CNC control?

Anytime I have a Mitsubishi question I call Chicago.
Those guys are GREAT, and they will be happy to help you out.
They really know their stuff.

Do you mean MC Machinery? That's our usual Mits contact.

David