need discontinued media

[DYNAGOD]

Im here at work and have run into a little snag.
 We have a large CNC milling machine here that is experiencing battery backup problems.. what this essentially means is that if this battery goes dead, then the machine will loose all of its parameter data essentially turning this 180,000.00$ manufacturing machine a paperweight..
The controls utilize 3.5" Maxell MF2-256HD 1.6mb media
but i am unable to find any..It appears to have been out of production for years..
anyone know a source for NOS or maybe just i could track some down..
thanks

[RacerX]

Do you think you could substitute one of these?

It's the same size, but I don't know if it's compatible.

http://www.audiooutfitter.com/store/MF2-HD-IBM-10MX.html

[RacerX]

The more I think about this and look around, I'll bet you can use any double sided, high density 3.5" floppy in that thing.

I could be wrong, but if you have one lying around, it can't hurt to try.

[DYNAGOD]

gave a try with some normal 1.44mb/2HD media and it worked
theres a compare function after writing and it says that the data on the disk matches the data on the eeproms.
I just figured they wouldnt be using HD media unless the backup used every nook and cranny of the disk..
i even went so far as to contact maxell but they havent gotten back to me so i went for it..

I have amaster disk that id idnt want to overwrite,
Man,those HD disks are HEAVY!
its like holding 3 normal 3.5 disks.

thanks !!

[fredster]

What kind of CNC is it?  Doesn't it have a tape reader on it?  Didn't it come with the executive tape?

You can hook up an assist to that battery backup.  

There's lots of aftermarket groups that fix CNC's like that.  

[DYNAGOD]

its a  AJV-25/404 with a mazatrol M32 B1 controller.
proboly circa "89"

the procedure from mitsubishi automation involved using the HD drive, not the PLC so i wanted to stick to the directions.
i have the master disk that the machine came with, but the machine has had multiple maintenance operations done to it  over the years and no one knows if those changes were ever reflected on to the master disk. in fact im quite certain they never were, cause no one knew the thing even had a floppy in it except me..
so it stood to reason to keep the original disk stock and to make current backups of the present configuration.

the battery warning has been on for some time, and i personally feel its just an "idiot light" situation,but we havent shut the machine off in over a year because of it.

plus i really dont want to have to MDA 20-30 pages of hexidecimal parameters./
ive had to do that before with our VTC-16 and it was not fun.. make just one mistake somewhere  

[fredster]

Can't Mazak in Kentucky help you with that?  

An M32 is a fairly common controller.  If I remember, they have the serial cable that comes up standard on boot too.  If you change the parameters to add new features you have to buy them like a fanuc.  They keep a record of that.  Unless you have one of those wonderful people that know the parameters...  That floppy would bring it up.

You can download the current parameters too.  I had one with the palletec system on a horizontal boring mill and we did that all the time.  That way you can load the boot disks and then the saved programs and parameters.  

Mazak was one of the better vendors for phone service too.

But their documentation was written by the Japaneese and then translated into english by somebody in India and it was printed in Mexico.

But, it's nothing money can't fix.  

[DYNAGOD]

oh absolutely, the problem is the boss doesnt want to pay to fix it..  
its paid for you know..