Recently, Somebody Somewhere wrote these words
> Can you tell us what the controller does (disk or what?) and who it is
> made by? Or can you tell us what large chips are on it?
>
> > For my sins, I repair hardware for a (meagre) living, and my main
> > instrument is a pinpoint machine which has an industrial pc card
> > running specialised software and driving a set of ISA cards (I have
> > one controller card, 3 driver boards, and a Scanner card on the isa
> > bus. Apparently they are on the bus from 0x0300 up. The software
> > has a file somewhere telling it what's there, and it searches for
> > them. Apparently it is not finding the controller card.
>
> What tells you that? What are your symptoms?
Windows boots, but the thing fails selftest. Going into the utilities,
and self testein from there, It fails line termination with the
following readings
Tristate tests:
<Every channel> LL: 0.8 14985mV UL: 2.0V (LL=low level, middle =
reading, and UL=upper level)
Contacts Bias Test
<Every channel> LL: -6.5V -15000mV UL: -4.5V
Pull Down Test
<Every channel> LL: -0.5V -15000mV UL: 0.5V
Pull Up Test
<Every channel> LL: 4.0V 14985mV UL: 5.0V
Every channel also fails Loopback test
<Every channel>: Current Shutdown Threshold Low
>
> > These cards are non-pnp, and do not identify readily. The machine is
> > tailing edge technology from 1999, but at what it does it's the
> > tops. Now the controller card seems to have sat down, I can't find
> > a hardware fault in it. Neither can I afford a replacement. A sad
> > fact.
> >
> > Is there any utility I can interrogate the bus to find if these
> > cards are there? Isapnp or pnpdump just doesn't see them.
>
> More detailed info please. Some of us have collected a lot of older
> hardware.
What I have is a Diagnosys Pinpoint 1 with controlller card, 3 driver
cards (72 channels) and an InterV3 card. It runs via an industrial pc
card slapped into an isa bus. I have a complete copy of the hard disk on
a spare hard disk, so I was able to eliminate the software from
enquiries by substitution. Diagnosys want me to have a service contract
which they can't service anyhow (I'm in Dublin; they want it returned to
Scotland every time and me to pay carriage both ways).
This has gradually grown as a fault, starting first when warm. The +/-
15V supply exploded one day (I kid you not), but I got past that.
Freezing one of the LM759s appeared to clear it for a while, but they
appear to be doing nothing now (I scoped them each during a self test).
I swapped that one around, and it made no difference. Most recently a
16V tantalum exploded on the +/- 15V section of the controller card. Now
(by unplugging) the 5V section of the controller card (talking out to
the driver cards) seems operative, but the +/- 15V section is awol. I
can disconnect the ribbons to that half and get the same passes/fails,
and symptoms. It's slightly distressing that exploding seems to be the
usual failure mode :-/.
I have a maintanance manual in a pdf, and their selftest fail flowchart
points to the controller card and nothing else. I can go over it with
my old polar analogue signature analyser but find nothing suspicious.
--
With best Regards,
Declan Moriarty.
--
Author: Declan Moriarty
INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fat City Hosting, San Diego, California -- http://www.fatcity.com
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