RV4S windows 95 upgrade to windows 98

[laurianus]

Hi
I just bought 2 RV4S machines and they come with windows 95 and I wanted to update on windows 98SE for USB support. Also it has the software version 3.1 and wanted to update to 3.5. Do you have any suggestions/advice? There is anything which needs special attentions?

Thank you
Laurian

[Mike]

Don't think there are any issues.
Once you get USB working, I'd highly reccommend getting  a USB gamepad to speed up setup :
http://electricstuff.co.uk/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=31acbef84bd1b3bf45c33de929ed8353&topic=10.0
I don't know if there are any issues updating RV software, e.g. if it can uses the old  calibration file.
Make sure you take copies of everything before changing anything!

[laurianus]

I intend to use other HDD to install windows 98 on it.
I have some other problems and maybe someone can help me:
1. What is exactly the park position. Can you make me a picture.
2. The computer it has 2 COM ports and I do not know which one to connect to which one on the controller box. How can I found which one it is OK?
3. How I need to export from Altium and use on RV4S and what are exactly the steps. I have manuals but I did not figure out what exactly I need to do. I open gerber... the top layer looks OK but I saw it ask for top paste and when I open that one components seems to go outside of the green mask. Also I did not figure how to place the components.
4. There is a way how I can move the machine ARM from the software?

Thank you

[Mike]

I intend to use other HDD to install windows 98 on it.
I have some other problems and maybe someone can help me:
1. What is exactly the park position. Can you make me a picture.

Not at machine ATM, but it's with the arm pointing left, about as far back as it will go 

2. The computer it has 2 COM ports and I do not know which one to connect to which one on the controller box. How can I found which one it is OK?

There are only 2 options, so use trial and error. There are a few different machine variants so hard to give a definitive answer. The COM port numbers are in a config file somewhere.

3. How I need to export from Altium and use on RV4S and what are exactly the steps. I have manuals but I did not figure out what exactly I need to do. I open gerber... the top layer looks OK but I saw it ask for top paste and when I open that one components seems to go outside of the green mask. Also I did not figure how to place the components.

My PCAD import utility will probably do the trick - I'd expect Altium can export a CSV in th eright format.

4. There is a way how I can move the machine ARM from the software?

Yes, once you load any job, you can use the arrows button (near top-right) to bring up the move dialog. There is also an armtest.exe utility that can test limit switches etc., but I don't recall if it gives control of the motors



[/quote]

[spiyda]

Hi
I just bought 2 RV4S machines and they come with windows 95 and I wanted to update on windows 98SE for USB support. Also it has the software version 3.1 and wanted to update to 3.5. Do you have any suggestions/advice? There is anything which needs special attentions?

Thank you
Laurian

My experiences with upgrading machines in the past (not specifically versatronics)
would suggest getting the machines working to some extent before upgrading the software
That way, if you get issues, you will know they are specifically due to the software and not hardware issues.

For example, a simple thing like a worn belt will prevent proper homing

[laurianus]

Not at machine ATM, but it's with the arm pointing left, about as far back as it will go 

Thank you for your answers... but can you please confirm if I understand right: the first articulation on the fix arm it is back as possible and the next one it is oriented on front?

There are only 2 options, so use trial and error. There are a few different machine variants so hard to give a definitive answer. The COM port numbers are in a config file somewhere.

What the com ports controls? One feeders and the other one arm movement?

My PCAD import utility will probably do the trick - I'd expect Altium can export a CSV in th eright format.

Where I can download PCAD import utility? Altium can export csv in the right format.

[Gopher]

If it helps, back in my RV4 days I setup all our PCB's using RV Gerber, it isn't all that bad but a typical PCB would take me about 2 hours to put in and then check over, partly because the graphics rendering speed and scrolling are so very slow. However RV Gerber is very fussy about Gerber formats and will come up with a PCB completely out of scale if you output with a different resolution (IIRC it wants 3.2).
Altium outputs a whole bunch of extra columns in its pick and place file there don't seem to be options to customise it, you can simply select CSV or text. I'm pretty sure this means you will need to tweak Mikes import utility code to handle the CSV file properly. It expect

"RefDes","PatternName","Type","Value","Layer","LocationX","LocationY","Rotation"

"C1","SMALL1206","SMALL1206","2.2u 50V","Top","2859.3","2691.9","270.0"

Proteus looks like

"J1","CONN-D9F","D-09-F-S",BOT,0,-764.63,-976.252

Protel looks like

"Designator","Footprint","Mid X","Mid Y","Ref X","Ref Y","Pad X","Pad Y","Layer","Rotation","Comment"
""
"R4","1005[0402]","69.882mil","156.496mil","69.882mil","156.496mil","44.291mil","156.496mil","T","360.00","SMR 2K2 0402"

As you can see, in Protel we have been using the comment field to store our internal part numbers -handy to avoid defining the same part multiple times slightly differently

As with any pick and place machine I would suggest it is a good idea to establish any new 'packages' a design introduces and create those 'CDFs' before you start anything else.
Once you have defined a component don't go and tweak its Pin1 definition at a later date, it will mess with all your existing defined products.

The RV4 is a contrary little swine, components are defined as they are orientated in the tape which means they do not and indeed often cannot follow standard conventions such as https://blogs.mentor.com/tom-hausherr/blog/tag/ipc-standards/ this means you may need multiple component definitions for the same package simply because the rotation changes between tape and tube (hence warning above).

Don't forget something like 0805 is a footprint not a full package definition. For the best results you will then have variants of this for the different heights, these might be picofard (thin, typically pale), 100nf+ (pretty thick usually brown), std nf values (somewhere in between) etc. Radically differing heights using the same package may not image consistently and thicker parts will of course get rammed into the board quite hard if the defined height is much smaller.

[SteveW]

Your fatal flaw is using the pick&place output from Altium, you should be exporting a (PCB, not schematic or project) BOM with X & Y locations - you can pick any attributes you like, in any order.

I've got some Python scripts that I use instead of Mike's VB, which also allows me to substitute my long Altium names with ones short enough not to make RVSeatup act like a mad thing when fields overflow (16 characters, if I recall).

I'll happily share them (and the instruction sheet, as you still need to mess with some control files) - it takes machine setup for a typical job down to about 5 minutes, and also generates dot maps for solder printing.

Steve

[SteveW]

Try this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19878973/Versatronics_Python.zip
Unpack it, and, if you want an easy life, SUBST (or NET USE, or whatever) yourself a P: Drive if on Windows) so the paths work.
READ_ME_ASSEMBLY.txt contains the instructions I follow (it's rigged to allow you to copy & paste from it into the cmd/powershell box. I tried to script it, but there's not really a lot of benefit, I often want to check things, or fix errors, as I go.

It's clearly not an external tool, and expresses its displeasure by crashing out rather than printing pretty error boxes. There are debug printfs all over the place to assist me, but possibly not you. Anyway, knock yourself out - use it, modify it, ignore it, just don't sue me! I've pushed hundreds of jobs through it, it fundamentally works.

Steve

[arvydas]

For my RV1S upgrade I just bought a completely separate PC with ISA slot and set everything up on it. The one that came with my machine was seriously underpowered anyway. The only thing I had to do was to plug the ISA motor controller board to the new PC once I have everything set up. I highly recommend doing it the same way.