[MT Stringer]

After reading the info that Dave linked in his reply above, I see it is not worth trying to use an adapter.
OK, OK! I quit. I will have to wait until I get the PC back.

Dangitanyways!

 

[roofner]

Have you got an old Desktop they all had parallel ports for printers?

 

[MT Stringer]

Have you got an old Desktop they all had parallel ports for printers?

I wish. I threw it away last year. Darn good mini tower. Through the years, I had upgraded the motherboard and other hardware several times. I am thinking about putting out a shout to see if any of my friends have an old one I can borrow. :grin:

I have an SSD in my old laptop I could pull and use. Not feeling the love this morning. It is getting colder and now it is raining...on my parade! :grin:

 

[roofner]

Mike this adapter is supposed to be bidirectional port which means it should work with old laptop.
https://www.officedepot.com/a/produ...m_mmc=PLA-_-Bing-_-Networking_Cables-_-137013

 

[MT Stringer]

I just checked the UPS tracking #. The package left Houston at 6AM this morning. Should be delivered tomorrow. They claim 48 hour turnaround for warranty work, so hopefully, I will get it back soon.

In the mean time, I am working on other things I can do for now.

 

[4DThinker]

In the mean time, I am working on other things I can do for now.

UPS/USPS/FedEx/whatever tracking has to be one of the greatest "app" categories ever conceived IMO.

I'm glad to hear you have other things you can do while waiting. Better than pacing angrily. :wink:

I've recently become more aware of how much one can do while a CNC is running, too. Yesterday I woke up at 5:00am with an idea for how to align and accurately cut tenons on the top of tapered legs that will also be mounted at an angle relative to the table they are for. Between 5:00am and 7:00 when I left for work my CNC hummed (loudly) away at the work while I had breakfast, shaved, took a shower, walked the dog, checked and replied to emails, downloaded Vectric's latest Christmas project, etc.. I changed out parts every 25 minutes or so. Vacuumed up the mess a bit each time.

My tendencies had normally been to hover around the CNC while it worked just to admire the magic and perhaps catch the inevitable mistake before it ruined a student's project. To leave the (CNC) room while it runs is normally a nervous endeavor, but somehow a calm of experience found me yesterday. The student was delighted.

4D

 

[honesttjohn]

I have even left mine run all night when it was on a long finish cut. I like to stay close when it's running but I can multitask at the same time. It's almost like having another set of hands without the people hassle. I have 4 stations set up. While the machine does it's thing I can make new files for projects, cut and glue material to needed sizes, sand and stain, and poly or spar.

It works good for orders big and small.

The more you use it, the more you will trust it. BUT.........there's a reason we name them after women. You still can't become too complacent.

 

[4DThinker]

BUT.........there's a reason we name them after women.

I've occasionally wondered what a good name for my Meteor would be. I'm not usually one to name a machine, but can appreciate the practice.

So what have you named your CNC, John?

 

[difalkner]

Mine is simply Saturn. On some days it's 'El Stupido'. On some days the operator is 'El Stupido'. I don't care for those days... :crying: :grin:

David

 

[MT Stringer]

WOW! Yea UPS. The PC was delivered to Probotix at 10:20am this morning. I shipped it on the 5th at 2:18PM. Less than two days by UPS Ground - $12.95-that was money well spent.

On another note, I have discovered that I am not a painter!!! >

 

[honesttjohn]

So what have you named your CNC, John?

Nebbie

 

[4DThinker]

I like that, John. Now after cleaning up around my Meteor I'm think about calling her "Messie".

4D

 

[MT Stringer]

I won't be naming mine "Lucky"!:frown:

 

[4DThinker]

If your CNC survives to eventually become a reliable worker, then perhaps "Plucky" would be an OK name.

 

[MT Stringer]

I still have a few days to think about my situation. I need to figure out how to make a backup of the hard drive when it comes back. Surely I can put it in a docking station and use Acronis to make a backup, huh? I have a NexStar portable docking station that will accept standard hard drives or the smaller laptop/SSD drives. I would like to help minimize down time, if the PC craters again. I had checked the drive size in the Probotix PC and it is only 10GB! Heck I didn't know they made them that small.

On a different note about hard drive capacity, I can still remember reading in a magazine when the world was introduced to the 40MB (megabyte) hard drive. The author said "We will never be able to fill it up!" :surprise: :grin:

 

[BalloonEngineer]

I remember paying $300 for my first hard drive, an enormous 10mb!

You might want to check with probotix on what disk format they use. Linux has some disk formats that some windows software may not recognize. Maybe you can get them to throw in a self-booting memory stick with a backup/disk image. A usb drive big enough (16gb) to contain a full disk image costs less than $10.

I’ve made a recovery disk for my computer. For my DIY, I am tech support. I have also backed up the installers for the versions of CNC related software (Mach4 and ESS drivers) I am using. There may be newer versions available, but I haven’t upgraded since I have a stable, working version. Also backed up all the settings necessary. Hopefully never needed but bits are cheap.

 

[difalkner]

I still have a few days to think about my situation. I need to figure out how to make a backup of the hard drive when it comes back. Surely I can put it in a docking station and use Acronis to make a backup, huh? I have a NexStar portable docking station that will accept standard hard drives or the smaller laptop/SSD drives. I would like to help minimize down time, if the PC craters again. I had checked the drive size in the Probotix PC and it is only 10GB! Heck I didn't know they made them that small.

On a different note about hard drive capacity, I can still remember reading in a magazine when the world was introduced to the 40MB (megabyte) hard drive. The author said "We will never be able to fill it up!" :surprise: :grin:

My first computer was an XT 8088 with a special adapter card to allow a 20MB hard drive instead of the limit of 10MB and we thought the same thing - you just can't fill this thing up!

David

 

[MT Stringer]

Good news! I got a call from Probotix. They repaired the PC (warranty work) and it has been shipped. Delivery scheduled for some time Friday. I hope all goes well and I can get back to work. The Brown truck knows where I live! :surprise::grin:

 

[MikeMa]

Woohoo!

 

[honesttjohn]

They say what it was??