Hurco VM-1 not booting - Black Screen

I'm posting this, not because I have a problem I need help with, but because I HAD a problem I needed help with, and could not find it, and eventually I solved the problem. So I'm hoping someone googles this in the future, and finds it useful.

I bought a used Hurco VM-1, 2007, from 520machinery, an on-line broker. I sent in the Hurco rep before buying it, and it checked out OK. I paid, trucked it to Cincinnati on an air-ride, and it arrived DOA. It would not boot - black screen. I called the local Hurco rep, they came in, pulled the boards from the controller, and lo! it booted. Happy, everyone went home. Next day, after I power cycled it, it would not boot again. I pulled the boards and re-seated them, it booted ... but 30 minutes later the software froze. I had to power cycle, but then it would not boot.

Hurco rep on the phone said it sounded like it needed a new CPU board ... at $2700! Screw that. I spent a week trouble shooting to no avail.

520Machinery didn't offer to help - their contract said 'no warranty'. I can't argue legally, because it said it right there on the document I signed ... however when someone makes a profit off me and I get a DOA machine, I would imagine you should suck up some of that profit in hopes of retaining a happy customer. Not so much. So I will not do business with 520Machinery again.

Kudos to Hurco Corporate. They got me connected to an engineer who emailed me to call him to talk through troubleshooting. I never did, because I fixed it, but at least they were trying.

At the end of the day, I did google searches, so did a buddy of mine, and we ended up with one obscure post from England (I think), where this guy claimed he whacked his motherboard on a table, and it worked. Whacking on a table seems a little extreme, but it got me thinking. THe only thing on a motherboard that is succeptible to a whack are the pin contacts between the CPU chip and the board in the ZIF socket. So rather than pulling the board, I just grabbed the CPU fins and wriggled ... it booted. So I pulled the board, removed the chip, squirted it with contact cleaner, replaced it .... it booted 2-3 times, then balck screen again.

At this point, a Hurco board is almost $3,000, but a board with the same serial number (or very similar) on ebay is $200. It was a Nextel of some sort - no longer made, however I wanted to call Nextel CS and find out what the exact difference in model numbers was, because I'm pretty sure I could have substituted. Long story short, I also saw on ebay that the actual CPU chip was a Socket 478 Pentium 4, which was selling for $5. Being of the mindset that when I'm footing the bill, I'll try solutions prioritized based on cost, rather than probability of success, I bought a chip, swapped it out, and it has been running fine ever since.

In looking at it, the controller is a back-board with cards stuck in horizontally. I'm sure it was designed as a horizontal board, with cards stuck in vertically, but in the Hurco configuration, the weight of the card is cantilevered. I'm sure that as it flexed in trucking, one or two of the CPU pins wriggled loose. I hate 'marginal' electrical problems, but in this case it contacted occasionally, and when I wriggeld the board, and it contacted occasionally again.

Bottom line, if you are having black screen boot problems, look at the seating of the CPU chip on the motherboard.

Regards,

Art

Dammit. I'm not posting on this forum again EVER! You are jinxed.

Not 12 hours after I declared victory and posted the above, all full of myself, it crapped out again. Double poop!

So I spent $300 on a replacement board off ebay. TBD if that does it. I remain convinced it is a contact in the ZIF socket. I didn't want to spray contact cleaner in there for fear of doing harm to the board ... maybe that's a non-issue now. I'll update as I do or don't make progress.

I can vouch for the CPU socket fix. I've repaired a load of these Boards and all have required the CPU to be removed from the heatsink and some new silicone based thermal paste applied. If it runs under load and locks up after 10 mins, replace the CPU chip. Any bulged caps should also be replaced (especially the row alongside the CPU). New BIOS battery, edge connector clean and memory re-seat should also be done. Works in just about every case and I always run a 100% CPU and GPU test for a minimum of two hours that also uses all the available memory and fills empty disk space.

Fwiw..
I have never touched those controls, but lots of boards with pentium etc. chips...

The chips themselves == never fail. Very rare.
The contacts may and do.

Any kind of cleaning is ok, when you have nothing to lose.
Abrasives and chemicals are fine, and will, almost always bring it back to life.

The corrosion may be in the socket.
A new chip may have a bit fresher/different edges, and thus gets contact, where the old one did not.

Over 3000 repairs, I never saw a definitely dead cpu..
Many years ago.
Otoh, I never really tested the DOAs too well, just got them running.
Mostly, it was the motherboard(s), and I never checked for source, as no commerical need to.

Like post #3.
Contact cleaner is fine.

Did the edge connector clean, did the new CPU battery, did the new chip. It ran for a while then locked up and wont re-boot. If I wriggle the chip/heat sink, it will sometimes boot up, so I am suspecting the ZIF socket itself. The pin holes are mighty small, so I don't know if there is a way to either open it, or get in there with a pin to clean the contacts.

I have a used/replacement board on the way. I also just ordered some deoxit contact cleaner in a bottle, so I'll get a way small brush and see if I can get it in the little holes.

I thought about upgrading the Ulti-Max control to WinMax, and asked Hurco how many of the components were 'off the shelf' that I could buy myself to try and mitigate the $10,000 upgrade cost. They recommended against that route.

The ZIF socket can be opened by putting a small knife blade in the little slots on the top and un-clipping it. There are no other components in it other than the lever. The contact is made by the CPU pins sliding into tapered slots. I had one last week to repair where the previous user had removed the CPU and heatsink by levering it out of the socket but had not seperated the CPU from the 'sink and simply just tried to mash it back into the socket while it was closed. About a dozen of the socket pins were bent and unrecoverable.
Another one for the bin.

I had micked the pins on the CPU, and they were 0.013", so I bought a gage pin, and was going to get to work with a magnifier, dipping the gage pin into Stabilo and inserting/rotating it in every pin hole to try and scrub the contacts ... this was before I saw Rooster's post, above. I was scared to try and open the socket, for fear that 478 small contacts with springs would all pop out, and there was no getting them back together .....

Anyhow, I digress. As I was looking at the board through the magnifier, I noticed that one of the 1500uF capacitors is domed at the top, while all the others are flat. So now my new hypothesis is a bad capacitor. That sort of makes more sense than my previous bad contact theory. My previous theory never explained that when you do nothing other than power cycle the machine, it should still work. However caps will charge and hold a charge ... and when I pulled the board and re-inserted it, it would discharge.

I have a replacement board on the way from ebay for $300, so that gives me a little courage. I got new capacitors on Amazon for something stupid, like $4 for 50 of them. I actually ordered several, because after I ordered an electrical engineer buddy suggested using a 'good' brand, like Panasonic or Sanyo, rather than gambling on some unknown like Chin-Hu Capacitor factory #7 ....

So next step is to break out the soldering iron and swap the capacitor.

Double poop. I tried unsoldering the old cap - didn't work. I had the soldering iron dialled up to 450F, and it didn't seem to melt whetever they used, so I used a 0.037" carbide ball mill in a dremel and drilled out the old wires. It left a bigger hole than the replacement wires, so I had to get a big glob of solder in there to fill the hole.

At first, I yelled victory, because the stupid machine booted, so I figured at a minimum I had not screwed up the mother board irreperably .... it ran 30 minutes then froze.

So I am now looking forward to the arrival of my replacement ebay board. That was a $300 option. If that fails, I'm in for the replacement $3000 Hurco board.

I dunno. I understand that things break, and you need to pay to play. But some part of me says something is wrong when a machine with no reported problems shows up here, and does not work. Especially when I can pull the board and get it to start up once ... so when I paid to have a Hurco rep check it out before shipment, it is possible this problem was not detected because a board had been pulled, so it started up for the inspection.

I just find the coincedence that it 'happened' to break during the truck shipment a little incredulous.

Hello, i understand this is a 3 years old thread.
I have the same problem.

Hurco / VMX24S / 2007/ Ultimax4

Machine was working perfectly for a year(I bought it used (Germany) in tip top condition)
Closed it on a Friday, and shop was closed for 1 week.
The week after went to turn it on and the back end everything works, but no sign of life on the control, spindle chiller and even on the top the light beacon.
Removed the Peak board and removed the heat-sink. the CPU came attached to the eat-sink and a couple hours later I managed to placed the CPU on the socket with new thermal paste. The capacitors do not look very bad to me to the exception of one that seems sightly bulged on top.
I have also removed the JATON JTNMC 82228PCI video card. It does appear that there is one capacitor in not good shape on this card.
I have cleaned the slots and the boards with contact cleaner and re-seated them. However the problem persists.
I have tried to wriggle the chip/heat sink a few time but machine never boots on.
On the back-plate there are a few red leads on and they are on in the following sequence:
1-on
2-on
3-off
4-on
It appears that cpu makes a intermittent beep however it is not very noticeable because of the fans noise.
I have started my own small business and this is not good at all.
I am not any expert on electronics aor electrics ( a bit dense on those) but can check /do things with the proper guidance.
I kindly ask for help, Hurco service its far away (Spain) and this is the only machine i have.

link:
Shared album - valterMQ - Google Photos

With the Help of Bloke from England, i manage to sort out the main problem.

Removed Graphic card, and connected the VGA to the Peak cpu board.
Finally some screen activity, however now it shows disk boot failure error.
Is this related to the cmos?

Probably. Try the hard drive settings as I suggested on the other site and see what happens.

Got it. many thanks

Hi, i am buying Hurco VMX30 from a seller, the machine is coming with problem, the screen is black and doesnt power on, drivers, inverter and converter have signals that are working. Can this be serious problem ? I need to decide in next 2 days wheter to buy it or not. Will anybodye here be ready to guide me throu this problem ? Thanks !

Hi,
Well, without visual it is a serious problem
I would try to connect an comun pc monitor with VGA cable to its back. You will need to remove the
screws and panels in its back
Those monitors are pricey. There might be ways to trace the problem, but 2 days its short...
There is someone here that will help better than me.
Cheers