Roboform disc drives

Mine are bad, whats the easy fix to them, appear to be std. floppy drives,
dont think Iwant to purchase from Charmilles.
RK

I don't have a Charmilles sinker, but wires, Charmilles 290's about 1998, I assume they use the same 720K disks.

I do believe that Charmilles price is better than expected. If I remember right they were about $70/each.


I went with a USB drive instead, I have had them on two of my wires for a while. They are much more expensive, I think it might have been about $275 a drive, but they work well and I don't miss the floppy drives and the problems. If you want I can look up the manufacture of the USB drives I have used. They don't have the best tech support but I have gotten them to work on my machines.

Dial EDM, I have been having problems with my drives as well. I would be interested in hearing about the USB setup you have on your 290's. I have a 290, 500 & 510 that I would like to convert. Talking to Charmilles it sounded like you couldn't use just any Floppy to USB converter. Please let me know what you are using. $275.00 sounds cheap compared to what they want for theirs!

Jack
562-596-2784

Jack,

yes, we purchased the drives for $275 plus shipping from a PLR electronics. I had one from about a year ago on one machine and recently purchased one for our second machine. Below I have given the link to the drive. They will end up asking a lot of questions. Mine work fine. The only thing that happens with mine is I have to hit the reset button on the front of the drive when ever I have rebooted the machine. Once I do that it reads the USB stick just fine. The only other issues can be, finding a USB stick that works, I think they only worked up to 2 gigs. I found 2 that worked for me, and they have always worked, I have never had a problem since them, other than if you put too many files on them, your computer will see all the files, but the machine only sees something like the first 720K or only so many files. Other than that they have worked great, I wouldn't go back.

The first one took a little while to get going, but after dealing with tech support, telling them the type of floppy in the machine, and how it was jumpered, (actually I sent a digital photo) they told me how to jumper the drive and it was worked ever since.

A few people at Charmilles know I have the drive installed. I had an situation recently where the backup batteries went on my 290's, and I had to soldier on new batteries on one of the boards. I had to reload the software. I was told by a service tech that I couldn't just copy the files off the floppy onto a USB stick, that it wouldn't work, but I don't know that for sure. I have taken the technology files and just put them on the USB stick and copied them. So I think it would likely work. I didn't install any drivers to get the USB drive to work, so I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Good luck and let me know how it works for you.

Floppy to USB disk drive upgrade

my concern is reloading the operating software after a reboot,machine has froze up before or like you said batterys go bad, (already replaced mine), are you able to reload SOFTWARE thru the USB? Not to concerned about program loading at this point, mainly keeping machine going. Sounds like a great way to go otherwise.

rkdeckel said:

my concern is reloading the operating software after a reboot,machine has froze up before or like you said batterys go bad, (already replaced mine), are you able to reload SOFTWARE thru the USB? Not to concerned about program loading at this point, mainly keeping machine going. Sounds like a great way to go otherwise.

Click to expand...

I have never reloaded the software this way. I have only reloaded the software 2 twice in the past 10 years. The first time was when we moved into this location, we removed all the boards for shipping, so we had to do it than I believe, and when my backup batteries went a few months ago. other than that I have never reloaded the software in those years. Before than I just reloaded the software when there was a new version out for your machines.

I don't know if you can reload the software through the USB. I will see what I can try out when I get a chance.

Dial EDM said:

I don't know if you can reload the software through the USB. I will see what I can try out when I get a chance.

Click to expand...

I did reload the software on one of my machines to test it out. I just copied all the files off of one disk onto a USB stick. I copied all files including any hidden files. And it worked just fine. I just had to hit the reset button on the drive just like I have to anytime I reboot the machine. Everything seems to have loaded up just fine. I'm just getting the wire aligned and all that stuff now.

Disclaimer: "Your mileage may vary"

repayment plan: If you are ever in Buffalo, look me up, you owe me a beer, but I prefer chicken wings.

Would those be Buffalo wings?
Do you know if you can copy the operating software on the machine back to your USB or floppy emulator. That would be handy, my have to go thru the protected areas reserved for Charmille tech though. I think I will look into 1 of those systems and copy software to it,I know floppys can only live so long, and have had to reload software a couple times, cpu froze up and had to reload software a few times to get it working again.
RK

Buffalo wings is there another kind?

I don't know anything about copying the operating system back onto floppies or the USB drive. I would guess from what I know, if you can do it to a floppy you can do it to the USB drive, it seems to work just like a floppy from what the machine can tell.

when i had a robofil 400, i installed emulator software, which made the machine think it was talking to a disc drive, but was actually talking to a pc.
the emulator software was dos based, but could be made to run under windows.

toolie.