Creating a new system disc for Siemens 840D

I recently purchased a 2000 DMG DMC103V. Im getting an mdbbe.ini error on boot and want to recreate the system drive from the original factory discs. I have a win 95 disc and two floppies, One dics is named "SETUP" it has 840SET47.ARJ and ARJ.exe and INSTALL.BAT. The other has all the machine data files KOMP, MDAT, NC, and PLC.

I called DMG and asked what the procedure was for recreating the system discs from the original dics and they refused to provide the info. Saying that it required formatting the drive with 4 partitions and was just toooo complicated for owners to do.

I have a quote in for a replacement hard drive with preinstalled software from DMG but am concerned it will take months to get this, and cost$$$$$.

I cant use the machine at the moment as I am getting a MDA (MDI) error (cant write into MDA window, MDA buffer error) that prevents me from setting up the tools etc to run a job. Machine will do most operations, including, referencing, jog,manual tool change, running simple programs, but no MDA.


Can anyone tell me the basics on how to create a new 840C system disc? Also, Id prefer to use a solid state drive. Ive read about people using SSDs on 840D control but no info on what type of disc is required. Any help would be appreciated.

Included is a photo of the control label.

I will be happy to do it "no cure - no pay".
3 decades experience.

Endless details apply.
You wont need to ship the floppys.

--
The SSD is a separate issue.
- -
I used to live of this type of stuff, 20 years ago, fwiw..

markp said:

I recently purchased a 2000 DMG DMC103V. Im getting an mdbbe.ini error on boot and want to recreate the system drive from the original factory discs. I have a win 95 disc and two floppies, One dics is named "SETUP" it has 840SET47.ARJ and ARJ.exe and INSTALL.BAT. The other has all the machine data files KOMP, MDAT, NC, and PLC.

I called DMG and asked what the procedure was for recreating the system discs from the original dics and they refused to provide the info. Saying that it required formatting the drive with 4 partitions and was just toooo complicated for owners to do.

I have a quote in for a replacement hard drive with preinstalled software from DMG but am concerned it will take months to get this, and cost$$$$$.

I cant use the machine at the moment as I am getting a MDA (MDI) error (cant write into MDA window, MDA buffer error) that prevents me from setting up the tools etc to run a job. Machine will do most operations, including, referencing, jog,manual tool change, running simple programs, but no MDA.


Can anyone tell me the basics on how to create a new 840C system disc? Also, Id prefer to use a solid state drive. Ive read about people using SSDs on 840D control but no info on what type of disc is required. Any help would be appreciated.

Included is a photo of the control label.

Click to expand...

Sounds good, Ill PM you. Thx!

Hanermo, Tried to send a PM but your inbox is full.Thx

Rather than deal with all the drive cloning rigamarole, I ended up buying a Startech bit for bit 2.5" IDE to 2.5" IDE forensic drive duplicator. They still make these new! 225$. I plan on making a clone then replacing files as needed from the expanded ARJ archives till the machine works normally.

Hanermo, I tried to send a PM but your box is full. Great if you could do this for me and the machine. I can dropbox the factory floppies...DMG is saying the control is too old to make a new HD for. They want me to upgrade to a newer control with a later OS!!

hanermo said:

I will be happy to do it "no cure - no pay".
3 decades experience.

Endless details apply.
You wont need to ship the floppys.



--
The SSD is a separate issue.
- -
I used to live of this type of stuff, 20 years ago, fwiw..

Click to expand...

Well, I tried to use the drive duplicator today to make a disc copy and now the original drive which was mostly working is not recognized buy the system. The drive duplication seems to have failed as well. If I look at the files in linux, they all seem to be there, but on the original drive, there is a temp partition that didnt copy over. I now own a 14,000lb paperweight. Never heard back from DMG if they can make a drive. Oh well.

If anyone knows how to make a new drive off of the original DMG system discs, and the original DMG win95 CD please let me know. Ill pay your price.

markp said:

Rather than deal with all the drive cloning rigamarole, I ended up buying a Startech bit for bit 2.5" IDE to 2.5" IDE forensic drive duplicator. They still make these new! 225$. I plan on making a clone then replacing files as needed from the expanded ARJ archives till the machine works normally.

Click to expand...

so the disk duplicator hosed your original drive? and I assume you tried to put the drive back in the machine then it wouldnt boot?

I thought so, made a rube mistake, I put the locking handle of the drive carrier on wrong on the weird siemens industrial drive carrier, (handle position changes limit switch, which was now in wrong position, took the handle off as I didnt see any obvious way to slide the drive out). After trying to make a clone with the startech duplicator, (clone failed partway through),I put the original drive back into the machine, the control couldnt see the original drive!!, thought it was cooked.

Finally figured out that the limit switch was in the wrong position, duh. Original drive works as before. Looked at the drive in linux. Tried to copy using DD. Lots of errors in error log. Only copied 90 megs or so, about the same as the hardware clone box. (Machine does not recognize the clones from the hardware duplicator or DD as good system drives but can see them.)

I put the drive in my mac box. Copied over the mdbbe.ini file. Now machine boots with no errors and the error log works (MDBBE.EXE will start now).

Now I see all the errors including the low battery in the NC unit!! Changed NCK battery, all errors gone. machine seems to be working normally now.


So original system drive definitely has bad sectors and will fail at some point. Challenge now is to make a clone with software that can ignore the bad sectors. Seems as if all thats needed to run the machine is on good sectors at the moment. Coincidence? Any suggestions on how to proceed to make a good clone??

pcasanova said:

so the disk duplicator hosed your original drive? and I assume you tried to put the drive back in the machine then it wouldnt boot?

Click to expand...

I cloned the drive using ddrescue, a linux program. The clones are bit for bit copies. They have exactly the same partition structure and number of bits as the original. The control sees the clone drive(s) and its name but indicates it as an invalid drive.


Why wont these cloned drives work? I tried using the exact same 2gb drive, a 6gb drive and an SSD drive. All clones are identical but seen as invalid. Has any one ever successfully cloned a siemens drive? Does siemens sneak some special file on their drives that cant be copied even in a bit for bit copy?

SUCCESS!! Switched to an IBM 3.2GB drive and the clone works perfectly!! So, drive size has to be slightly larger, but less than 4gb,(dos limitations) or the exact same drive to work.(the other 2bg drive was slightly smaller, different brand) We used ddrescue with rewrites set to 3 passes if bad blocks are encountered. Running under ubuntu 16. ddrescue was able to reduce the size of the bad blocks to about 12k from 110k by making additional passes. There were 3 bad blocks on the drive.

Also, I was able to make working duplicates of the cloned drive using the Startech SATDOCK4U3RE duplicator. It wouldnt work on the original drive with bad sectors. (I also made a good clone of my DMG DMU50V millplus control hard drive that works fine). The duplicator was $130 new on ebay.

markp said:

SUCCESS!! Switched to an IBM 3.2GB drive and the clone works perfectly!! So, drive size has to be slightly larger, but less than 4gb,(dos limitations) or the exact same drive to work.(the other 2bg drive was slightly smaller, different brand) We used ddrescue with rewrites set to 3 passes if bad blocks are encountered. Running under ubuntu 16. ddrescue was able to reduce the size of the bad blocks to about 12k from 110k by making additional passes. There were 3 bad blocks on the drive.

Click to expand...

I know this thread is a couple years old but the info might help someone in the future. I recently had a 840c hard drive fail. We had a few spares but they were not the correct image / setup for the machine. I was able to clone another hard drive from the sister machine. I tried using Acronis and clonezilla (disk to disk and disk to image) but both were unsuccessful. Acronis would clone but would not boot, even when choosing to clone the MBR. Clonezilla would always fail for "unknown FAT type". I at last was able to get a bootable cloned disk by using the "dd" command in linux ( Linux Mint 20 in a virtual machine) . I ran the "dd" command and cloned from disk to disk. I had both disks attached to "USB to IDE/SATA" adapters. DD is a powerful terminal based cloning software but beware it will not ask you for any conformation before it starts so make sure you know what the drive locations are. (sda,sdb,sdc.....etc...) I used the following command. *Note* Your hard drive locations might not be the same as mine fo verify. You can use the fdisk -l command to view disk and info.

(linux mint /ubnutu based linux)

*Note* Input drive letter for the hard drives to be used where "x" is *Note*

sudo dd if=/dev/sd"x" of=/dev/sd"x" conv=sync,noerror status=progress


This might take a while esp. dealing with old IDE drives.