OmniTurn

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40 Allen Blvd., Farmingdale, NY 11735, United States
Tel:  (631) 694-9400 |  Fax: (631) 694-9415

Hooking up an Omniturn to a Windows network.

It's oriented to a new G4 control, but it will be basically the same for G3 controls, except that the driver files and the MS-Client files will have to be placed on and executed from the Omniturn's hard drive instead of the USB stick, and of course the nework card and driver files will be different, since the older controls don't have PCI-Express slots.

 

Setting up a network share (Win7)

From the Start menu, go to Computer.

In the Computer page, double-click drive C: . You will see a listing of files and folders on drive C:

Right-click in the white space of the page. Place the cursor on new in the resulting menu, and click
folder in the New box.

A new folder, named “New Folder”, will appear in the list. Right click on this folder, and click
Rename on the menu. Now type the new name for your new folder (I'm using “share2” for this
example).

Right-click on the folder again, and place your cursor on “Share with” on the menu, then click
“Specific people”. A box will appear where you can type in the name of people to share the folder with.
Type everyone in this box and press Enter. “Everyone” will appear in the Name list. Click on
Everyone and a drop down box will appear.  Click Read/Write in this box, then click the Share button. A new box will pop up, informing you that your folder is shared. It will display your folder name, and beneath it, it will display the network path for your folder. In this case, it's
\\NETBOOK\share2.

Click Done.

Click Network on the menu on the left of the screen. A page displaying computers on the network
will pop up. Double-click on your computer (in this case, it's NETBOOK, as we saw in the previous
step). Folders which are available to the network will be displayed. Right-click the folder we're working on (share2 in this example) and click Properties. The Properties window will pop up.

Click the Security tab and the Security settings will be displayed. Click “Everyone” under “Group or user names”. Make sure that in the “Permissions for Everyone” section, “Allow” is checked for every category except “Special permissions”. If any permissions are not checked, use the Edit button to allow you to check them. If they are correct, press OK to accept them.

Next, go to the Start menu and click “Control Panel”. On the Control Panel, click “Choose
homegroup and sharing options” in the Network and Internet settings. You will be taken to an
“Introducing HomeGroup” page. On this page, click “Change advanced sharing settings..”. You will be taken to the “Change sharing options for different network profiles” page. Make sure “Public folder
sharing” is turned on, and “Password protected sharing” is turned off. When these are set correctly,
click “Save changes” to make the changes take effect. You will be returned to the “Introducing

HomeGroup” page. Click OK to get out of there.

You're done. Your shared folder is now accessible to the network.

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Networking Omniturns

This document tells the tale of a network installation on a G4 control.  The network we're connecting to is a pretty typical small-shop setup: a few Windows computers connected to a modem/router. Most of the computers, including the one that will be playing the role of the CNC server, are connected via wifi. The Omniturn is connected directly to an ethernet port on the router.

Making a Server

The “server” was created this way, on a computer running Win XP:

Click “My Computer” on the Start Menu, then double-click the icon for drive C:. The contents of the drive will be displayed.

Right-click in the white space of the display and then place the cursor on New in the menu that pops up, and click Folder in the New menu. A new folder will be placed in the display. Name this folder whatever you want to call it. We called ours CNCSERVE, and will call it that throughout this document.

Right-click on the CNCSERVE folder and click “Sharing and security” on the resulting menu. A Properties box will pop up, with the Sharing tab selected. Check the boxes for “Share this folder on the network” and “Allow network users to change my files”. Click OK, and you have a server.

Once you have the server created, go to My Network Places from the Start menu. You
should see the CNCSERVE folder as a network share. If you set the View to Details, you will see the
network path to the share displayed under Comments. In our case, the network path is
\\ibm\cncserve. This info will be needed later. Put some Omniturn part program files in the folder. Windows 7 shared folder setup is somewhat different, and will be described in a separate document.

Getting the Omniturn ready

We are using a G4 control with a PCI Express slot available. Some early G4 controls have a PCI slot. G3 controls may have PCI or even ISA slots. Strange as it may seem, ISA ethernet cards are still available. If you have the PCI Express slot, you can use the same card and drivers we used.

We used a TP-LINK Gigabit PCI-E adapter. The ethernet chip is a Realtek RTL8168B. The adapter didn't come with DOS drivers, so we downloaded them from Realtek. Most of the PCI Express adapters in the world use this chip, so it's quite likely that any card you buy will use the same driver we are using.

Plug the ethernet adapter card into the PCI Express slot in the motherboard. You will need to get your ethernet cable into the control. Depending on your control's configuration you may have a plugged knockout hole available. If not, you'll need to punch one. Use a grommet of some sort to prevent contaminants from getting into the control through your cable entry.

On the Omniturn's USB stick, make 3 folders, called MSC1,MSC2, and DRIVERS.

In addition to the driver for the ethernet card, you will need the client software for the control. The files you need are here (note that links are case-sensitive):

www.omniturnfactorydirect.com/lan/DSK3-1.EXE This is the first part of the Microsoft client software. Put it in the MSC1 folder on the USB stick.

www.omniturnfactorydirect.com/lan/DSK3-2.EXE The second part of the client software. Put this in the MSC2 folder on the USB stick.

www.omniturnfactorydirect.com/lan/drivers.EXE The drivers for the ethernet card. Your computer will probably be afraid to download this file. Ignore its whining and download it anyway. Put it in the DRIVERS folder on the USB stick. If you are using a card that doesn't use the RTL8168, you'll need to use the drivers for the card you're using instead of this file.The driver files that are included within this archive file are:

OEMSETUP.INF
PROTOCOL.INF
RTGND.DOS (the name of the .DOS file will be different for different cards)
RTL8168.NIF (as will the .NIF file)

After installing the network card, when you turn on the control it will display a message offering you the opportunity to configure the card's Boot Agent. Ignore this message and it will go away. Boot the Omniturn with the USB stick installed and break out to the DOS prompt by pressing Ctrl-C when prompted to back up your files at the Omniturn logo screen. Older software won't let you break at the backup screen, so if you can't get out there, say N to the backup prompt and break out of Jog mode by pressing Ctrl-Q after turning the servos on and clearing the initial fault message.

You will now be looking at the DOS prompt K:\CNC>.
At this prompt type C: and Enter to log on to drive C: (the hard drive).
You should now see the
C:\RUNFILES> prompt.
Change to the Root directory on drive C: by typing CD\ and Enter.
Log on to drive D: (the USB stick) by typing D: and Enter.
Change to the DRIVERS directory by typing CD\DRIVERS and Enter.
You will now see the
D:\DRIVERS prompt.
Type DRIVERS and Enter. The DRIVERS archive will be unpacked. If you are not using our driver package, you probably copied the driver files into this folder individually, so you don't need to unpack them.
Type CD\MSC2 and Enter.
You will see the D:\MSC2:> prompt.
Type DSK3-2 and Enter. The MS client software will be unpacked.
Type CD\MSC1 and Enter.
You will see the
D:\MSC1:> prompt.
Type DSK3-1 and Enter. The rest of the MS client software will be unpacked.
Type SETUP and Enter. The client setup program will start, showing an introductory screen. Press Enter and you will be told that the setup program will use a directory called
C:\NET unless you want to change it. Press Enter to accept. You will be told that the setup program is examining your files, and then you will be shown a list of network adapters, which will not contain yours. Select “Network adapter not shown on list below” and Enter.

You will see a box where you can type in the path for the drivers. Type D:\DRIVERS and Enter. The driver name should then show up (in our case, “REALTEK RTL8168”).
Press Enter to accept this driver.
You will be informed that MS Client will maximize network performance by using lots of memory unless you press C to minimize memory use. Press C.
You will be prompted for a user name. We used OMNI1. Do as you please.
A screen will come up giving you these options:

Change names
Change setup options
Change network configuration

Use the arrow keys to highlight “Change network configuration” then press Enter, and a screen with 2 boxes will appear.
Select “Add protocol” in the lower box and a new box will appear.
Select Microsoft TCP/IP and Enter and you'll be back to the double box.
Press Enter twice and a new prompt will appear. Type in
D:\MSC2 and Enter.

There will be a slight delay while the protocol files are loaded, then you will be prompted to press Enter to reboot. Press Enter and sure enough, the computer reboots.  When the computer reboots, it will boot without loading the new networking files.  This is because the setup program puts these files at the end of the autoexec.bat file, and because of that they never get loaded. To make them active, you'll need to edit the autoexec.bat file. You can do that by dropping out to the DOS prompt again as you did before and typing:

EDIT C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT and Enter.

The editor will start with the autoexec.bat file displayed. Reading through the file line by line, you will find a line that says CNC. Change this line to REM CNC and add a new line at the end of the file that says CNC Save the changed file and reboot the control. This time you will see a lot of new
commands displayed as the network files are loaded. The boot process will be interrupted by a
prompt for your user name. Press Enter to accept the user name you entered during the setup
process. You will then be asked for your password. Just press Enter to start with no password. You will be asked if you want to create a password file. Press Y, and you will be asked to confirm your password. Press Enter again. The boot process will continue to the Omniturn backup prompt.

Break out to DOS one more time and switch to the C: drive by typing C: and Enter. You will see the C:\RUNFILES> prompt.
Type NET USE N:
\\IBM\CNCSERVE and Enter. Actually, that's what we typed; you would type NET USE and the drive letter you want to use for your Omniturn's network drive and the path name of the shared file you created way back at the “Making a Server” section. After you've typed the NET USE command, you will be informed that the command completed successfully. Reboot again. The network is set up, but you're not quite finished.

Home the machine and go to Auto. You will be shown the file picker screen, as always. Press Alt-S to select a new directory, then select “OTHER” from the directory list. You will be prompted at the bottom of the screen for the name of the directory. Type:

N: (or whatever you called your network drive in the NET USE statement above) and Enter. The prompt will go away, and after a few seconds the directory listing will show the files on your network share. Pick one and you're off and running. From now on your network drive letter will show up in the list on the right side of your file picker screen and you can select it via Alt-S. Your network connection's all set!

 

OmniTurn 40 Allen Boulevard | Farmingdale, NY 11735 | Tel 631-694-9400 | Fax: 631- 694-9415
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