OkiePC
Lifetime Supporting Member
I spent the last four days reviving a dead robot after its CPU took a dump and our backups were found to be both missing pieces and flawed, in addition to being out of date. It was more than I wanted to learn in a down situation, and I was unable to restore the R-J2 controller without the help of PalletTool expert field tech from Fanuc.
I have as of today implemented a new backup procedure and policy to ensure I don't get caught holding the bag like that again.
Now I have a whole host of questions I want to record while they're still fresh in my overloaded brain...
SRAM PMCIA cards: My controller, running PalletTool V4.21-2A, would not read a panasonic SRAM card with files that were copied from another card via laptop ports. After the machine was functional again, we shut it down to make a controller backup on SRAM, only to find that one of our cards was reportedly not format (according to the teach pendant message). So, we used FANUC engineer's SRAM card and then tried to copy the files to my card using laptop PMCIA ports. The copied card was not recognized and reported as unformatted.
Is there a way to create a controller backup on SRAM that can further be copied to CD-ROM or other durable media, and then returned to the SRAM card in a format acceptable to my robot?
Also, if anyone knows how long the battery in a typical 2MB SRAM card should last...
K-FLOPPY: We are planning to purchase this software to replace our dated 720K "Fanuc Toaster" floppy drive. It took about 4 hours to load the system software with that thing, and because my alleged software program files were incorrect and incomplete, I had to repeat that installation four times in order to have a clean install before the field tech bailed me out yesterday. I watched the field tech use KFLOPPY on his laptop with a serial connection to the R-J2 UOP serial port. The software looked a little buggy, but seemed to function okay and was considerably faster than the toaster drive. Fanuc phone tech support said KFLOPPY is about $300, or the same as about 15 minutes of Robot downtime in this application. Comments on KFLOPPY to RJ2 experiences are appreciated...
A third potential means of CPU backup and quick restore is to keep a spare CPU with battery instaled sitting on the shelf ready to go. I am thinking of taking it one step further and setting up a CPU test bench with a spare PS card and the bare minimum other hardware required to safely communicate with it in the offline office environment for the purpose of maintaining and testing backups and having a readily available plug and play controller. Has anyone any experiece with this method of restoring?
In general any comments on the R-J2, PalletTool, PalletTool PC Offline, are desired....
Thanks...
Paul
I have as of today implemented a new backup procedure and policy to ensure I don't get caught holding the bag like that again.
Now I have a whole host of questions I want to record while they're still fresh in my overloaded brain...
SRAM PMCIA cards: My controller, running PalletTool V4.21-2A, would not read a panasonic SRAM card with files that were copied from another card via laptop ports. After the machine was functional again, we shut it down to make a controller backup on SRAM, only to find that one of our cards was reportedly not format (according to the teach pendant message). So, we used FANUC engineer's SRAM card and then tried to copy the files to my card using laptop PMCIA ports. The copied card was not recognized and reported as unformatted.
Is there a way to create a controller backup on SRAM that can further be copied to CD-ROM or other durable media, and then returned to the SRAM card in a format acceptable to my robot?
Also, if anyone knows how long the battery in a typical 2MB SRAM card should last...
K-FLOPPY: We are planning to purchase this software to replace our dated 720K "Fanuc Toaster" floppy drive. It took about 4 hours to load the system software with that thing, and because my alleged software program files were incorrect and incomplete, I had to repeat that installation four times in order to have a clean install before the field tech bailed me out yesterday. I watched the field tech use KFLOPPY on his laptop with a serial connection to the R-J2 UOP serial port. The software looked a little buggy, but seemed to function okay and was considerably faster than the toaster drive. Fanuc phone tech support said KFLOPPY is about $300, or the same as about 15 minutes of Robot downtime in this application. Comments on KFLOPPY to RJ2 experiences are appreciated...
A third potential means of CPU backup and quick restore is to keep a spare CPU with battery instaled sitting on the shelf ready to go. I am thinking of taking it one step further and setting up a CPU test bench with a spare PS card and the bare minimum other hardware required to safely communicate with it in the offline office environment for the purpose of maintaining and testing backups and having a readily available plug and play controller. Has anyone any experiece with this method of restoring?
In general any comments on the R-J2, PalletTool, PalletTool PC Offline, are desired....
Thanks...
Paul