[ doubt ] from pc to embroidery machine process and a problem

_jas · April 10th, 2009, 10:44 PM

Hello people , i want to help my girlfriend mom's with her machine , i'm really new on this and i dont understand well how it happens.

she told me more or less how she do it and i understood the following:

pre conditions:

have a computer or disk reader
have a embroidery machine.
have the machine connected to the computer / reader.

in my case i have a computer and a embro machine.

the technical daat about both are:
embro machine:
Tajima TMEF 612

computer:
procesor: pentium 3
ram: 256 MB
OS: windows xp sp3
HD: 20 gb
Software to load dst's : ORION SMC ( the software that she is running looked like something prehistoric, i do not found nothing related to that

)

process:

have the computer turned on
open the software.
charge the floppy disk on the software
turn on the machine
put the code to read from the disk reader / pc.
select the archive or archives that i want to load on embro memory
run the process on the machine

post conditions:

the embro machine will output the selected designs.

Background to have in mind:
in the past she had a disk reader but shw changed for a computer ( because , reader got broken ).

some weeks ago her comptuer got broken, and because its an old computer, she decided to get a better one.

the problem its that the new comptuer comes with win XP , and previous with win 98 so the guy that remplaced the computer , do some stuff to get the old embro program going on.

now , the program works, but when she want to load the data it gets a " ERROR 9 " , in the tajima.

Actual situation:
im like mad looking for a solution @ internet =p. and i got to here that looks a good place to ask ( after several hours of searching ._. )

searching , i found that it have to do with not founding the resources to load into the machine.
so by my understanding it could be several problems:

hardware problem of connectivity between the computer and the embro machine.
software problem of connectivity between the computer and the embro machine.

i analized this like a "lan computers problem" ... because its what i know ...
but i do not know the tools to solve it.

how can i check the connectivity problems ?

is there a way to check if computer is connected to the tajima ?
is there a way to check if the tajima is connected to the computer ? (not the same question, may be one see the other but not in the reverse case)

to resume:

do i understood the process well ?
do i have points missing ?
( in case i have: ) can you explain me where i'm having missing points ?
do you know how can i check connectivity between computer & tajima TMEF612 ?
do you recomend any software to load dst's ?
( in case you recommend: ) do you know any good tutorial page ?

to conclude

Thanks for any answer that you can give me , and thanks for any clue that you may have.

Later,

Julio

EmbroideryTech · April 10th, 2009, 11:39 PM

Julio,

Thank you for the email and asking me to look into this for you. I will do some research on this and what you may be able to do. I can tell that you are having problems loading a design into the control panel. I do not have a manual for this model machine since it is about 20 years old and my manuals do not go back that far. Your description is very detailed but kind of hard to follow. Can you clean that up a bit and give me a step by step account of what you are doing on the computer and machine? This may help. Use a numbered list to give me/us a step by step guide to how it is going and what is happening on the panel and computer.

However, I am also looking at many possible solutions to this on the internet. It sounds like you need one of the following to happen.

1) I would look for a used TMFD Disk Reader somewhere and see if this is a quick solution to the problem. You may find one on EBAY or other site for sale. I remember when I worked for Tajima they were quite expensive but I am sure they are priced much differently now.

2) How bad is the computer that broke? I come from the old school train of thought that if the old computer is remotely able to be repaired you may want to do that. Keep in mind that the machine you are working with is pretty aged in comparrison to todays technology. So when you have a computer that current trying to communicate to an older machine you run into many things. For example: Newer computers have a hard time using non-dos disk formats due to the way the Operating System interprets the files. In this case I do not think you have this problem because the Tajima File Language is a DOS BASED language. But there could be connections with cards and serial ports that are not communicating the same way as the older Windows98 computer. Also, judging the computer specs you mentioned this is not a huge improvement except for the processor. The rest sounds pretty low end compared to todays standards.

3) I have not heard of ORION SMC previously so I am not sure what to tell you here. There are many software packages on the market that can communicate to a Tajima. In fact that is probably the most standard machine type to communicate to. So you may want to consider purchasing a new program that is designed for today's computer specs.

I am pretty stubborn when it comes to tech support. I don't like to be beaten so I will continue to look for anything that can help you.

Take Care,

_jas · April 11th, 2009, 03:27 AM

thanks for the quick response,
about ordering:

turn on computer
run something that says " run first " (* note 1)
open orion smc (* note 2)
( in theory ) open the data disk on the software
( in theory ) import the data disk to the program
turn on the tajima
(in theory ) enter the code of the file to import from disk
( in theory ) error 9 reported.

* note 1: as i saw the configuration , there is something called "ms_ramdrive"
* note 2: the program was developed on VB version 3.
* note 3: whatever i point as " in theory " , its because , when i was there , she told me, that task has already be done. ( she already had the disk imported into the computer, and when she turnead on the tajima and do something to " connect " to the disk , it shows error 9 )

about your resposnes:

about the disk reader its quite expensive for her, its not going good the busines & we are in argentina , so ... dolar its almost *4 argentina currency. =/ but i take it as a resource.
about older computers, in teory , during the next week , the guy that is setting up the new machine for her , will return the older ones .

the problem that she had was something about keyboard port. ( cannot go deep into details because i do not know either , she just tell me, and i cannot saw the older computers ).

about the formating disks on XP i have found the following .bat script:
Code:
```
CD C:WINDOWS\SYSTEM32
FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9 /X /V:TAJIMA /FS:FAT
```
in case of the comunication part, does not exist a driver or something like that ? ( as i said before , im quite new on this :S )
about the new software, it runs the same luck as the first item. quite complicated because of cash :S. anyway we should try trials , and then we'll see which works better, to invest on it. or if they are free software, they are welcome too ( free as linux programas.).

well , i think thats all for today ( 4.30 am here ._. ) ...
thanks for your time =). later.

Julio