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The Sequel - Oh Blimey I bought a CNC Lathe (Beaver TC 20)

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vintageandclassicrepairs:
Hi Andrew & Phil
Funnily enough "Shanks Mare" was commonly in use here in Cork (Ireland) when I was a youngster back
in the sixties

John

awemawson:
I’d never appreciated that the reference was to your own thighs or shanks, so Shanks Pony was really saying that you have to walk!

mattinker:
I thought like Andrew that it was universal, it was definitely used in West Wales when I was growing up!!

PekkaNF:

--- Quote from: awemawson on August 04, 2021, 11:20:17 AM ---....
So today I took a trip down memory lane, re-learning how to connect my Win XP powered Toughbook running 'STEP5' to the  PLC. Amusingly, the correct version of the PLC code is still showing within the program, but I've not yet rediscovered how to upload the local copy to the PLC. If all else fails I can edit the code within the PLC to match my printout, but that's cheating!

Now I have to say that having uploaded masses of screen shots when I was doing it back three years ago, it has been a very handy resource to set me on the right path, as believe me STEP5 is not at all intuitive !

 :mmr:

--- End quote ---

First PLC programming language I learned and it was still not intuitive....even though I has suit case full of reference manuals, I had attended few lessons, I had been reading the manuals (in German, that time all the newest were in German and programs were in german too) and I had tagged along senior programmers. Ladders, timers etc. I go pretty familiar with, but assembly math and smart bit operations on tight control loop always raised my blood pressure. When making changes on running PLC while the machine was running production my blood pressure was off the chart and I was swatting bullets right when I pressed the <> key on old programmer to send out the to PLC.....hold my breath for few seconds and usually it went fine, but sometimes PLC stopped and everything went into safe mode with all noise and cacophony and signal lights went off....I could feel every eye trying to bore holes trough me....check error code, deside how to proceed and put the system up and running before whole plat goes down....don't miss it any more. I don't wake up at night on nightmare and start to think that did I checked the code right and make sure that everything is documented to last bit....all few thousands of I/O points and relevant programs. No one can do it alone, bit if you are the one that downloads the programs and flips the switch to "RUN"?

Good job keepping the hard copy, local copy and PLC up to date. There were some problems with this. You could upload the program and sometimes you didn't have the original program....working with downloaded program (without comments, titles and I/O functional names was fun. Even more so, if you had most of the program ans then decided to download something from PLC, it would wipe out the commets from similar named nets. We used download only for backups, programs were always uploaded. Live (hot fixes) were rare and generally frowned upon. Good times, but such times that will not be missed.

awemawson:
Well the spare interface card including it's daughter card with (I think) 16 kb x 16 byte battery backed ram card arrived the other day from my son in Houston.

Now it was this little RAM card that had failed when I had the lightning, and although I had a spare with which the machine worked, it didn't translate error numbers into error text after it was fitted. As the file of error texts is stored in the RAM I wanted to try a second spare, hence getting this one.

Well, ominously, the lithium battery on this recent card was absolutely flat - not even millivolts - I've seen several of these cards but the batteries have always had something in them - reputedly they are good for ten years but there is no date on the battery.

As the battery had to be unsoldered anyway I thought that I might as well fit my 'remote battery' lead to it as that's the eventual configuration the I want to end up with.

OK battery transplant done, machine reloaded, but various error messages. Three more total wipes and reloads (which is quite a complicated process!) performed but with the same results.

Accepts facts Andrew, the card is dead  :(

So first replacement RAM card re-installed - a further total wipe and re-load performed and we are back running but of course still without error texts.

So I now have two (or is it three  :scratch:) faulty RAM cards so I want to reverse engineer them for testing and repair.

They look fairly conventional with four 32k x 8 bit static Ram chips and minimal logic gluing them together and a bit for isolation of the main 5 volt rail when on battery back up.

Mind you it's all a bit small for my old eyes and will involve magnifiers !

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