Question Problems with COM port communication with CNC machine *urgent*

[caardahl]

Greetings,

I currently have a problem with trying to get and old CAD/CAM program to communicate with our CNC machines at work. I'm working on getting a program called Power Stations to communicate back and forth with the com ports . Power stations is being emulated on a virtual machine called DOS BOX. I need help configuring the com port on device manger and allowing power stations to recognize the com port so my work can send and receive programs. Our older computers running these programs just broke down on the shop today and we are in need of help ASAP. If there is a CNC program that can send and recive programs other than power-stations please let me know.

And if there is a better way then using DOS BOX it would be helpful

Thank you

 

[rgd1101]

DOSBox using a serialport | Jontas

 

[jsmithepa]

If this DOS BOX indeed runs as a DOS (character based) application, these old apps often attempt to interface with COM port directly, which Windows doesn't like, and you definitely cannot VM with it.

U may not have a choice but to run this with a dedicated box running XP or plain DOS.

 

[caardahl]

DOSBox using a serialport | Jontas

I'll try seeing if this works

 

[ImWolf]

At my shop the older equipment is not hard wired and we use either punched tape or an RS-232 connection read/write unit to load or backup programs.

Do you not have some sort of portable device to load programs from the CAD system to your machines?

 

[caardahl]

If this DOS BOX indeed runs as a DOS (character based) application, these old apps often attempt to interface with COM port directly, which Windows doesn't like, and you definitely cannot VM with it.

U may not have a choice but to run this with a dedicated box running XP or plain DOS.

c

I'll try seeing if this works

Its a step in the right direction,but now i'm getting communication errors on Power stations.

The following errors display

error opening port :2
error setting baud rate
error setting parity
error setting bits
error setting stop bits
error setting XON/XOFF
error setting CTS
cannot write to serial port

 

[caardahl]

At my shop the older equipment is not hard wired and we use either punched tape or an RS-232 connection read/write unit to load or backup programs.

Do you not have some sort of portable device to load programs from the CAD system to your machines?

We use RS-232 to Ethernet

We are attempting to find a program that will send and receive programs from the computer to the CNC so that our machinist can edit the program on the computer and send it to the CNC and recieve it back from the machine. Is there an alternative program than power-station that our shop could use? we just need it to work on a OS like windows XP or windows

 

[ImWolf]

Sorry, but I'm not familiar with Power-Station or the CAD to Control options available to you.

In your shoes, I might have sought out a forum like Fanuc, Mazak, Haas.... or what ever type of controls your machines run on for portable data options so you can at least get your spindles running while working on the "computer glitch".

Good Luck,
Wolf