HELP with Triumph Edger/Tracer

[Miles DiCaro]

Optical World,

I'm having trouble getting my Triumph Edger to communicate with my Triumph Tracer. The two are connected through a Gerber Translator box.
After I trace a frame, the screen reads... Trace ok....Transmission Ok.
I then try and pull the trace on the edger, at that point the edger times out.

What do I need to do?


Thanks

[dcf]

I am trying to recall the various ways the Triumph Edger and Tracer communicate. I wrote the software for the Translator back in 1996 so I am sure I have forgotten some of the details. I am pretty sure that the Triumph system was intended to work with a Lab Management System computer between the tracer and edger. That was one of the main differences between the Gamma and Triumph. Triumph was intended for wholesale lab use while Gamma was geared more toward dispensing locations with no host computer involved.
The Triumph Tracer connects to a host computer via RS-232 and transmits in the Gerber Output ASCII format or in Gerber Packed Binary. If using Gerber Output, there is no feedback required from the host. You could unplug the RS-232 cable and it would still indicate that the job was sent ok. The host computer would store the jobs sent by the tracer and provide them later to the edger when requested.
The Triumph Edger uses the translator to communicate with the same host computer. The edger uses RS-485, which is not commonly used by lab host computers. So the translator sits in the middle and converts the communication to RS-232 and changes the protocol to something the host can understand.
There is a set of DIP switches inside the Translator that can be used to test communication. If switch 3 is off (open) the translator creates a couple of test patterns. You can request job #1 (a circle) or #2 (a hexagon) from the edger to see if it is communicating with the Translator.