Older Haas memory upgrade

roamer said:

It looks like you have them already.
In my searching, it appears sometime around 01-03 they stopped filling the board, and only added
the caps where there are mem modules. Not a big deal, if I go this route, I'll desolder one and measure it.
In your third pic, the one where it shows the words Battery Backup, you can see the caps are present even tho no module is there. On my board, they are missing.

Click to expand...

I am saying this as a general electronics statement, and not from a place of any expertise in the Haas boards, but those caps are very likely "bypass capacitors" near the power pin of each chip.

The circuits may well work without them, but the bypass capacitors add just a tiny energy buffer right near each chip to make sure that each one has its own local good/steady power so that they will function reliably.

All of that said, I am a lurker who has been following this thread with great interest. I have a 95 VF-2 with only 256k of memory, so any lift from that would be huge. Anything other than dead simple small parts has me running drip, and it'd be nice to see how the other half lives someday

dbmatt,
That brings back memories.
I began my cnc life with a 95 VF-0 and it too had 256k.
Most all parts were small and simple, and memory wasn't an issue.
My memory modules showed up yesterday. When I have time, I'll start the upgrade.
I finally have a reason to purchase a Hako soldering station. :>
I picked up a couple smd soldering practice kits to get up to speed.
I have a hot air rework unit and I've done a few smd replacements, but it's been a while.
I'm thinking those capacitors are 10 volt. What do you think?
I can easily desolder one end and measure it, then order a dozen.

roamer said:

dbmatt,
That brings back memories.
I began my cnc life with a 95 VF-0 and it too had 256k.
Most all parts were small and simple, and memory wasn't an issue.
My memory modules showed up yesterday. When I have time, I'll start the upgrade.
I finally have a reason to purchase a Hako soldering station. :>
I picked up a couple smd soldering practice kits to get up to speed.
I have a hot air rework unit and I've done a few smd replacements, but it's been a while.
I'm thinking those capacitors are 10 volt. What do you think?
I can easily desolder one end and measure it, then order a dozen.

Click to expand...

Pretty much everything I a doing, even while learning and ramping up the ol' cnc side business, is requiring drip feed unless it is truly a simple setup. But that's ok. I'm assuming that it builds character or some such, and the frequent quirky mid-program stops when prototyping is getting me used to identifying mid points in the CAM/gcode to edit m'self a recover/resume program to feed the machine

As for the capacitor, it probably doesn't matter too much, but the most common ones I've used for small custom PCB projects were 100nF and rated 50V in the 0805 SMT form factor and they worked fine for powering 5V small ICs. I'm sure you can see the size of the pads on your board to get the right physical form factor. And the data sheet on your memory chips or general usage searches about them may confirm the best/preferred farad rating. As for voltage, as long as it is rated above the 5v your chips are likely running it is fine. The darn things are so cheap that anything in that ballpark is a non-factor. Again, the whole point (still assuming it is what I suspect it is for! :-D ) is just to be a little storage/cleaner o' power right next to the pin powering the chip so that it is certain to run stable.

In any case, good luck on the upgrade and dusting off those soldering skills. Also, for what it's worth, I started with a Hako FX-888D trying to learn to do SMD parts and was very frustrated. Then I upgraded to a Hako FX-951, and the added heat transfer/stability instantly made me think I was suddenly almost competent at doing it...

Picking up this old thread as it is right up my alley.

I have an old Mini Mill 2001 mod.
It has a 3092E Rev B mainboard, running M11.23N software
Video PCB (middle board) is a 3201G Rev A
Mocon board is 4023K Rev B running Mocon 10.03A

The mainboard is the same as Marc has in his VF0E, means I can upgrade the memory just like he did.
However, I bought a used board just to have something to tinker with. This board is a 3092G Rev B, I don`t know what machine it came from, and I have not managed to find out.
It seems like there is 16MB flash memory based on the chip type. And 1MB bbu ram
I have not been able to find out if this board can be used at all together with my mocon board.
I have been thinking about trying to read out the otp eprom and try to reverse engineer the bin file in order to find out what software version it has been running.
I have been told that M11.24 is the latest software that will run on my Mocon 10.03A.

- Will the 3092G rev B board work with my current Mocon 4023K Rev B 10.03A board?
- Is it possible to dump the .bin file from my eprom currently used in the mini mill, and then burn a new otp eprom to plug into the spare 3092G Rev B board?

Cheers
Jørn

Jorn... PM'ing you. Check you messages inbox here.