Trevor - Yes the old PC is a 486DX system that is running a very old version of CircuitCam/Boardmaster on a Windows 3.11 platform. The PC runs but I'm so afraid that due to the age the hard drive won't operate very long. The real tragedy is the LPFK folks installed 2 hard drives in the system so there is really no way to ghost the system since there is no USB on the system and all the expansion is so out of date (ISA bus) that I cannot use PCI add in cards. What I would like to do is find a XP version of the software and upgrade the computer to drive the system but the software is very expensive. So that is why I thought getting a open source software would work. However not knowing the specs of the machine it would be difficult to just try and figure out the X/Y on the machine. I wonder if upgrading the boardmaster software would work then trying to find a software that would communicate to the boardmaster software. I looked into the software upgrade
last year and I believe that I was quoted around $700 for the upgrade for the 93s. I'm living in the Portland Oregon area USA.
John
________________________________
From: Trevor White <
trevor.white100@...>
To:
Homebrew_PCBs@yahoogroups.comSent: Thu, April 15, 2010 2:49:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Homebrew_PCBs] Re: LPKF 93s
Hi.
Well I think your best bet is to sort out the original software. There
is a lot to learn with these machines and the software that comes with
them has a lot of built in information. For example depending on the
tool, the drilling speed is variable and the travel rate is variable.
When it comes to processing the files the software also does a lot of
work for you. Also calibrating the machine and setting up registration
for double sided boards is done via the software.
Where are you in the world? Also, are you able to boot the original
computer up? There are two pieces of software. There is Boardmaster
which drives the actual machine. This does not require a license. You
need to know what version of that is on the machine. Then there is the
CircuitCam software. This software is the one that takes the gerber
files, etc and converts them into a format ready fo the Boardmaster to
process and drive the machine accordingly.
The CircuitCam requires serial numbers to run. One of them is the s/n on
the side of the machine. The other ones comes with the software and may
well be found in the properties of CircuitCam if using version 3.
Trev
On 15/04/2010 03:03, John Michaud wrote:
>
> I have the machine with the original PC and software circa 1997 - I've
> never operated the machine and I cannot move the software to a newer
> machine the way the old machine is setup. So I was thinking of trying
> the open source Linux CNC machine software that is available do you
> know if that software will work with the machine?
>
> ____________ _________ _________ __
> From: Trevor <trevor.white100@ googlemail. com
> <mailto:trevor. white100% 40googlemail. com>>
> To: Homebrew_PCBs@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:Homebrew_ PCBs%40yahoogrou ps.com>
> Sent: Wed, April 14, 2010 1:41:51 PM
> Subject: [Homebrew_PCBs] Re: LPKF 93s
>
> Hi, what do you want to know. I have an LPKF machine.
>
> Trev
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
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