New to CNC micromill owner

[JTGREER]

I need some help with setting up the micromill I recently acquired. I am an engineering student, and recently got introduced to CNC in a class. I have recently acquired my instructors old Micromill that they replaced recently because it would not run on the new computers they got. I don't know much about it other than what he has told me, but he said it would only run on windows 95. So my first question is, can I upgrade the software to get it to run on XP or will it take more than that? I have included pictures of everything that came with the mill.

20150114_234531725_iOS.jpg (95.21 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150114_234731466_iOS.jpg (73.45 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150114_234736208_iOS.jpg (83.02 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150114_234755301_iOS.jpg (66.45 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150114_234805207_iOS.jpg (87.04 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150114_234819054_iOS.jpg (91.3 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150114_234826926_iOS.jpg (91.67 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150114_234844568_iOS.jpg (133.69 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150114_234852922_iOS.jpg (94.75 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150114_234906470_iOS.jpg (91.58 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

20150115_201212222_iOS.jpg (119.56 KiB) Viewed 10292 times

[TDIPower]

hi there is information about upgrading linked off the main Denford web page.

There is a wealth of info on here although I'm not so sure on the model you have.

You may find it will work of XP, possibly Windows 7 but that depended on the software on the eprom on the main board (large chip with a sticky label on the middle with a version number on it and possibly other data, looks to be a yellow label in the photo) and the control program you have.

If you can post up what info is on the label someone should be able to give you a better answer than that.

The thing is you don't need a super computer to run them. If you could find an old laptop or old PC with an RS232 serial port and a floppy disk drive you should have it running in no time. I have an old DOS based lathe which runs through a DOS window on XP. if I remember correctly you can select to run programs in a older version within XP. So it makes the program think it is on a 95 rather than XP machine. Not sure quite what it does to achieve that but it could well work for you.

Pete

[JTGREER]

Thanks for the info!

Upon further searching through all that came with the mill, I found that I had overlooked this CD.

20150127_235607149_iOS.jpg (83.25 KiB) Viewed 10274 times

Since the computer I have does not have a floppy disk drive currently, would this CD work in place of all those floppy disks?

I popped the back off the mill today and took a picture of the label you had mentioned. It appears to have " denMENT 2.0.B10/S/B19-JD5" printed on it

20150127_231725673_iOS.jpg (116.68 KiB) Viewed 10274 times

[TDIPower]

the licence will be on one of the floppies, so you will need to get that off the floppy. You can just store the file on the HDD of the PC and then when you install the program from the cd it will ask for the licence disk, just point it to where you saved the file.

I noticed you have a 'dongle' that plugs into the parallel or 'printer' port (NOT between the RS232 25pin plug and the machine) on the computer I am 99% that will be so you can run mill cam designer which I saw a floppy for.

Pete

[JTGREER]

Alright it has been awhile since I have been able to work on getting this mill up and running, but today I got a chance to work on it some more. I do now have a computer with a floppy disk drive that is running xp. I got the mill all hooked up, plugged in the dongle correctly, went to run vr milling, and it said "dongle not found". I wiggled the dongle, unplugged and then plugged it back in, but nothing changed. What am I doing wrong? Is the dongle bad or incorrect?

[Martin]

Dongle?

You have a licence disk for VRMilling! It's the floppy marked up VR CNC Milling, Registration Software. If you run the setup file the dongle won't be requiered.

[JTGREER]

Well I tried to run the setup file on that floppy disk, but it keeps coming up with a window that says the disk needs to be formatted. I have not formatted that disk yet, if I am not mistaken that would clear everything on the disk.

[TDIPower]

As I said earlier the physical 'Dongle' you have will be for mill cam designer. As Martin says the VR CNC Milling 'dongle' is actually the licence file on the floppy disk.
Have you been able to use the floppy drive on the computer to read any of the other disks?
You are correct, if you format the disk it will erase what is on it.
I had it in the past at work where a floppy drive can't read a disk but another drive can. I soon copied all the disks to HDD and CD as backups. I had a fear we could loose the license if the disks were corrupted, long since upgraded to VR5 though.

If it is the only computer you have with a FDD, you might be able to get a computer repair type shop to see if they could pull the data off it.

Let us know how you get on.

Pete

[Steve]

The dongle would be for the older dos software. As Martin says you need the licence disk. I would try a few pc's as e floppy will probably read in one of them. If you have the software installed on a PC somewhere you can recover it.

See link:

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2543