Replaced the hard disk drives with compact flash card readers on my CNCs.

This might be of interest if you have a PC-based CNC control as I do.
Omniturn guys might be able to do something like this too I think

Yep, no more worries about the C: hard drive failing in my CNC
lathes. They have been inside spinning for about 10 years now, and I
figured it was just a matter of time before one crashed.

I used IDE CF card readers, they cost about $33/ea plus the CF card's
cost, I went with Sandisk industrial 512MB cards for $16/each, the old
HDs were only 256MB drives. These CF readers mounted right into the
spare slots of my 3.5" floppy drive bays so I can swap CF cards in and
out anytime I want (though they are not hot-swappable). I'm now
running the two lathes right from 512MB CF cards loaded with DOS 6.2
and the control's lathe software. Just left the old hard drives in
place for posterity, but disconnected them.

Bought an extra CF reader and set it up in one of my old Compaq PCs as
a test bed system and for loading/backing-up the lathe cards. BTW,
How do I set up the Compaq for dual boot? i'd like to boot either into
Win XP or a more basic configuration with DOS 6.2.? Anyone know? Just
partition my HD?

As these lathes run under DOS 6.2., I setup the menu feature in
CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT (good god what a blast from the past that
was) to be able to boot into a DOS shell instead of the standard
lathe software. Thus i basically have two 3,000 Lb. DOS PC's on the
shop floor and so I now have an interest is some software to fill up
all my lovely new C: drive room. Anyone got any suggestions for a
source for some useful DOS utilities? <ping J.Sheldroup?>

I downloaded PCFILE, for a character-based database that runs under
DOS. It used to cost a bunch of real money to buy that program. Free
now, but of course unsupported, I'd like to get something in a DOS
spread*** if one is still around. Lotus 123? Visicalc?
Communications software might be handy as well, as I've got untapped
serial ports on both machines and I could connect the two with a null
model cable I suppose. Could even set up my old 3-Com 9600 baud dial-
up modem. Would need some reason to call the lathes from home for
that. Might be able to get some status info out of it though. There
are history files in the lathe SW directories

Whilst I had the hood off the machines i also changed out to brand new
Sony floppy drives and got rid of the old 14" color CRT's,nicely
replaced them with new 15" color LCD screens. Also put in 2 new PC/AT
230 watt power supplies. Other than the memory chips, I think that is
about all the wear-outable stuff in the machines PC-based control that
i can upgrade now to head off future trouble.

Major improvement in reliability I think. Only problem I ran into was
one of the 486 motherboards has a soldered-on CMOS backup battery,
long past it's expiration date. I was NOT going to go messing about
with soldering in a new one just to maintain my CMOS parameters, i can
drop into CMOS setup on boot to detect the IDE/Floppy drives without
too much hassle.

I NEVER turn these things off BTW (unless the power goes kaput of
course). That's why they have lasted as long as they have in my
opinion.

So if your interested in anything like this and want some help/ideas
doing the same just let me know. It was pretty easy and i think i've
added some new life to some good old iron by doing this upgrade to CF
card readers instead of hard disks.

G'luck,
--
Paul S.
PDA Panache Corp.


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