What's new
What's new

Floppy drive to USB? Anilam 3000

M. Moore

Titanium
Joined
Jun 8, 2007
Location
Vancouver Island, B.C. Canada
Looking for info on the best option to transfer drawing data to the Anilam control.
It has a built in 3.5” floppy drive and several other connection ports.
Is an emulator the way to go or are there other options?
I am not much of a computer guy so need some help with this.

thanks
michael
 
Thanks ripperj,
I know you said that in my other post but wanted to create a new thread for anyone searching in the future.
Do you use a keyboard on your Anilam control or just use the machine buttons? The previous owner of my machine did not use a keyboard and never uploaded anything to the machine as he did all the programming by hand so I am just trying to sort it all out quickly.

Hardplates, where did you get the emulators for your greco’s? Plug and play? No problems?
 
Ripperj,
I forgot to ask about the compact flash drive. There is one on my control does your machine have one?
The info in the manual says it is “hot swappable”, I assume a floppy is as well?
 
Thanks ripperj,
I know you said that in my other post but wanted to create a new thread for anyone searching in the future.
Do you use a keyboard on your Anilam control or just use the machine buttons? The previous owner of my machine did not use a keyboard and never uploaded anything to the machine as he did all the programming by hand so I am just trying to sort it all out quickly.

Hardplates, where did you get the emulators for your greco’s? Plug and play? No problems?

Just $20 jobbies off amazon. If you get the correct one it is plug and play. If its a 3.5" 1.44 drive you need to get one for that or else you will be swapping jumpers around inside the emulator. In the beginning I bought one for a 720 byte disk by mistake but was able to make it work after an hour or so playing around inside the thing. You also need to format your USB as a floppy disk but it's pretty simple. I'm ok with electronics but not good at all with computers and software but I was able to figure it out on my own without asking any questions so that tells you it can't be really hard.

If you go that rout and have any questions I'd be happy to help the best I can. Like I said I'm not an expert but was able to muttle my way through it.
 
Thanks Hardplates for the info.
I have decided to go the quick route and use the floppy drive as intended. I have borrowed an external floppy to USB drive so I can connect to my desktop.
Just loaded a DXF file and we will see how it goes. One more stumbling block before I can work with the file on the machine, I need a Ps/2 Y connector so I can connect the keyboard and the mouse at the same time into the single port on the back of the control. I am also hoping that the mouse will work as you are supposed to load the driver into DOS before it will work.

I did test the keyboard today and it worked fine but was quite different than using the control panel and I did not have the cheat sheet handy. Interestingly the control keys do not work when the keyboard is plugged into the machine, all functions are controlled by the keyboard. Also my number pad on the right side of the keyboard was not working and it would be nice to get that going if possible.

Welcome to working with seemingly ancient computer technology.......
 
I started out with a keyboard, but decided it was more of a pain having it than not.
I was not trying to talk you out of the usb conversion, the proven to work ones I was looking at were about $300, I was pointing out that the floppy, while old ... works fine.
I did put a ITSCNC USB conversion on my Fadal VMC and it works well, that control is really ancient compared to the 3000m, but is reliable and stable and also plays well with modern cam. The control doesn’t really care where it gets the code from, just needs to be in the proper format, that’s the Post Processors job.

If you decide to make the jump to a modern cad/cam program, it eliminates 90% or more of the “ancient computer “ feeling. You do all the hard work on a modern pc, and it is just a few button pushes on the control to get the code copied onto the machine.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 








 
Back
Top