Unusual i386sx board, and cant find the CMOS battery

[cpl rampage]

Hi All,

New to the forum, looking for some help with this unusual board. It is from a older CNC mill that is the only CNC mill I am allowed to use at work (Machinist is understandably tight fisted with the newer machines). It looks like it has lost the BIOS settings since the last time I used it. It now defaults to boot from the A drive which it did not do before. I have a bootable floppy with the DOS based CNC OS, and everything still seems to work. So I crack this thing open and I am having a hard time locating the battery (or what device it had originally been booting from, but maybe I will figure that out later)

On the board there is copyright CSS Labs, and Panda P/N 1213309 Rev A, I have looked around but other than some info on CSS labs who made computers way back when but nothing on this board. I also tried looking for board with out a CMOS battery or external battery on ISA cards (long shot) but I couldn't find anything conclusive. Below are some pictures of the board and the setup it was in. I will try to take some more pictures tomorrow of the expansion cards as well. I looked all over for a battery or a Dallas RTC or similar to no avail, can you guys help me out? Can there be a BIOS without a battery and/or could there be a battery or RTC powering this on one of the ISA cards?

 

[cpl rampage]

Forgot to take a picture of the underside of the board, there is a sticker with some more info, but nothing that I could use. Also grabbed some pics of the ISA boards as well. First board is the VGA card. Second appears to be a keyboard interpreter of some sort, takes they keypad from the front and connects to the DIN port. Second and third boards connect together and seem to do the low level CNC control and output to the servo drives. I am not seeing any batteries or RTCs on these either. I am really wondering if this never had a battery? There is an external battery jumper and connector but nothing connects to it.











Ran out of time after work today, but hopefully next week I can put it back together with the DIN to PS/2 adapter and see what happens.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Arkady]

Hello,

In my opinion, there is no battery/DALLAS RTC chip onto your motherboard, only an external battery connector.

On the picture 4, you will notice an 4-pins header (one pin cut -> key), near the two white power connectors. It's marked JP13 EXT BAT
First pin from the right of the picture should be positive. Pin 4 should be negative. 4,5v (3xAA) should do the job You might try 6v (4xAA), but i'm not sure it's a good idea.

Then, your motherboard will keep time/date and BIOS configuration.

 

[cpl rampage]

Yeah, I saw that connector, but what was strange was this system did not have anything hooked up to that jumper when I took it apart. And up until now it would boot from some sort of internal memory, because it did not need a floppy in the A drive to boot. I am guessing there is some sort of bootable rom on one of the expansion cards, but I don't know. Maybe I will make a battery pack if I can't get it to boot like it used to.

 

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely a nice motherboard. It's a late model 386SX with up to 128kb cache, and integrated IO. It's from a decent brand "Panda" and has a good chipset.

 

[KC9UDX]

Which model Trak is it? I've worked on hundreds of those machines, but I don't think I've ever seen that particular model. Most of those machines *always* boot from the floppy.

If the owner is willing to spend $600, you can put the whole unit back together, and exchange it for a refurbished one.

 

[cpl rampage]

Which model Trak is it? I've worked on hundreds of those machines, but I don't think I've ever seen that particular model. Most of those machines *always* boot from the floppy.

If the owner is willing to spend $600, you can put the whole unit back together, and exchange it for a refurbished one.

Its is a Proto Trak M2 mounted to a Sport K3 Mill. If it comes down to it, I will just boot it off the floppy, but I feel like you didn't need to do that before. It had a floppy in the drive, but I know that floppy was just used for transferring programs from mastercam to the unit. The machinist has a OEM floppy disc from SWI with the OS on it that I can boot from. maybe I will just make a copy of that.

 

[sungu]

Breakout board

Breakout board

Its is a Proto Trak M2 mounted to a Sport K3 Mill. If it comes down to it, I will just boot it off the floppy, but I feel like you didn't need to do that before. It had a floppy in the drive, but I know that floppy was just used for transferring programs from mastercam to the unit. The machinist has a OEM floppy disc from SWI with the OS on it that I can boot from. maybe I will just make a copy of that.

Hello . i have a similar PROTOTRAK Cnc with the similar cpu shown. My CPU got spoilt and i would like to replace the whole motherboard with a breakout board and Mach 3.
Could someone kindly guide me to a similar project or a breakout board that enables me have control on the servo drives and enables me connect the feedback from the encoder to the whole system. The encoders are connected to the servo motors.