Acorn worked for years and suddenly stops

[cncman172@gmail.com]

Keith,
I have been a Beta tester on Acorn so I have used the board extensively. Life got in the way and I had not touched the machine for maybe three months. I turned it on and noticed there was no heartbeat. I checked the power supply it was at 24VDC. Two LEDs were on the BBG board but no heartbeat. I unplugged wires and same story. I decided it must have somehow got bricked so I downloaded the debricking software and followed the instructions and the four blue LEDs came on one at a time until all four were blue. I waited another 10 seconds, then let my finger off the button and unplugged the 5V power. I then reinstalled the BBG board on the Acorn motherboard. I then turned on the power and started CNC12 I could see a blue LED flash every couple seconds which they attempted to communicate. Nothing. The heartbeat was still not working correctly. The blue shielded ethernet cable works fine on the other ethernet port to the internet so I know the cable is good. I normally never leave this machine plugged into the internet. I read that Windows might have loaded the firewall and sure enough defender firewall was enabled, so I disabled that and tried again, still nothing.

I know there was no power surge or anything else, the only thing that has changed in the last two months is we got net internet service, but again this machine was not plugged into the internet. I also checked the static IP address is set to 10.168.41.1 so everything looks correct.

When I look at the ethernet cable connection on the back of the Windows10 PC, I do not see any LED indication like occurs when I check the other port with the internet.

When you debrick the BBG and plug it back into 5V supply after you complete the process should the heartbeat LED blink every second?

Looking for any advice available. Thanks

Russ

[cncman172@gmail.com]

Just unplugged the PPG and powered it via the micro USB connector and the LEDs blinks for a second then the heartbeat starts and occurs every second as expected, this seems to indicate the BBG board is work and waiting on a firmware upgrade.

What now?

[cncman172@gmail.com]

I tried to plug the PC into just the BBG board and after it was powered by the microUSB it had the heartbeat. I tried to run CNC12 and it still will not talk, but the heartbeat was flashing. The YELLOW LED was on and the GREEN LED was on, but the Green one for traffic was not flashing. When I look at the ethernet on the PC and check while this is happening no LED indications, wonder if something in WIndows had that shutdown or something.

[cncman172@gmail.com]

After sleeping on my issue overnight, I decided to search the message log.

3-28-24 8:39am CNC12 Normal Exit

6-15-25 CNC Started
Error initializing CPU ... cannot continue
Exiting CNC mill due to a known error (63)

This is an old version of CNC12 v4.18, I never updated it since everything worked perfect.

I have downloaded CNC12 V5.3 but would like to figure out what is happening before I go further. It had been more than a year since I turned on the machine unlike three months that I was thinking. Ugh

Any guidance would be appreciated. I have backed up my cncm directory.

When I try to connect you can see the blue light blink about once a second, but then it slowly changes to blinking about every five seconds.

Russ

[ShawnM]

With the Acorn all back together can you ping the Acorn? I know you said you checked the IP address but did you try and ping it? What are those results? Run the PC tuner on your PC as well and that will reconfigure the PC in case anything was changed.

When you get a connection again you can update to 5.3 if you like. Lots of new features.

[cncman172@gmail.com]

ShawnM,
Thank you for responding. I went down and tried the ping of 10.168.41.1 and that was successful. I tried it before starting CNC12 and it worked and also after CNC12 timeout and it also worked again.

I will download the PC tuner to see if something strange got turned on next. I know that the Defender Firewall got turned on and I know I had that disabled along with virus software, since this machine has only been on the internet a couple minutes its entire life.

Will share the PC turner results shortly. Thanks again

Russ

[ShawnM]

Great Russ, please post those results when you can. Here's a link to the download page with the PC Tuner on it if you need it.

https://www.centroidcnc.com/centroid_di ... loads.html

Windows will try and sneak in any update it can when it just smells the internet. Let's hope it's something simple here and the PC tuner can find and fix it.

[cncman172@gmail.com]

Shawn,
I ran the latest version of the cleaner and the results were all Green, the only thing it did not find done was Notepad+ was not installed. However, after running the cleaner program, I can no longer ping the BBG. When I try the four packets fail.

Next steps?

Russ

[ShawnM]

Shawn,
I ran the latest version of the cleaner and the results were all Green, the only thing it did not find done was Notepad+ was not installed. However, after running the cleaner program, I can no longer ping the BBG. When I try the four packets fail.

Next steps?

Russ

When you say "cleaner" to you mean the PC Tuner?

Open a command prompt and type ipconfig /all and press enter. This will list the IP address of all ethernet adaptors that are found. Assuming there's only one, what's the IP address assigned to it?

The BBG is now back attached to the Acorn, yes? Heartbeat good?

[cncman172@gmail.com]

Shawn,

There are two ethernet ports on this windows10 pc.

When I go under the network adapter for the TCP/IPV4 it is set to 10.168.41.1, with mask set to 255.255.255.0

The other port is set to DHCP to get an IP address automatically; the cable is unplugged so no ip address.

Now the strange part,
When I run IPCONFIG /all

the physical address shows, DHCP is NOT enabled, autoconfiguration is enabled?

the second port DHCP is enabled, autoconfig is enabled.

But the first port which BBG is plugged into is not showing an IP address?

Russ