GCC LaserPro Mercury problem

[Arron Martin]

Hi guys, I'm having a bit of trouble and I hope you can help me. I run a small business with my girlfreind and we use a gcc laserpro mercury laser engraver. Yesterday it was working absolutely fine but this morning it keeps coming up with a message on the display and I have no idea how to fix it, Ive tried reinstalling the software, the drivers ive tried a different PC ive tried different cables and various other things. If you can assist me in any way it would monumentally appreciated as this is our livelihood and our
only source of income. Thanks in advanced. Please refer to picture for error messages







316198316197

[Tony Lenkic]

Arron welcome to SMC forum,

Personally I don't know anything about GCC systems but here is a thought.
Would you know if your computer had a windows auto update that may have contributed to corrupt setup?
Restoring the system in this case may bring it back to working again.

[Arron Martin]

Hi, thanks for the welcome. Yeh I ran a system restore to take it back a week but that was unsuccesful .

[Arron Martin]

Anyone have any solutions?

[jack Halley]

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?61272-Mercury-L-25-Driver-Issue

Says to uninstall drivers and reinstall.

https://www.jorlink.com/support/laserdrivers-firmware.aspx
Link to drivers

[Richard Rumancik]

Aaron, the first message you show is a legitimate error message. The second one is a corrupted error message that has the file info superposed on the original message (filename = noname1 with laser parameters superposed.) It is pretty much meaningless.

I would certainly start with a clean driver reinstall. What driver are you using?

Perhaps you should consider changing the parallel port cable for a known good one.

Have you ever reloaded the firmware into the machine i.e. do you know how? Do you know offhand what firmware version you are running? It should come up on the display upon startup (assuming it is working well enough to display this.) You might have to refresh the firmware.

Are you able to view the built-in diagnostics at all? e.g. can you do a RAM test?

One thing that you should also do is turn off the machine and reseat the memory. If you could do a RAM test you might know if some memory has gone bad.

Does your unit have a serial port as well? Perhaps you could try to talk to it via serial port and see if it will communicate. (Serial is too slow for production but might help isolate the problem.)

Rodne Gold used to be the resident GCC expert but he has since unloaded all his GCC equipment. But you might try sending him a PM though (not sure if he will see your post.) He might have some ideas.

[Richard Rumancik]

Aaron, after looking at it a bit more it seems that the driver is the most likely culprit. Also, I would suggest running the diagnostic test if you can - it is called "hidden diagnostic" and you access it by holding the START/STOP and PAUSE buttons on the keypad at the same time, while turning on the machine. Are you familiar with this? Look for results especially for SRAM and DRAM. You can also check serial port functionality but for some reason not the COM port.

[Gary Hair]

Check with Kurt - he has helped me out a few times with my Explorer ZX
Kurt Koser
408-782-5122
866-4-LAZERS
www.LaserProNA.com (http://www.LaserProNA.com)

[Arron Martin]

Thank you all for the support. Honestly though, I wish I understood what you have all been suggesting. My knowledge of the laser and the operating system is next to none. I have only been working with the mercury for the past month. I will replace the parallel port cable and I have tried reinstalling the driver. Wether I've done it correctly is another thing. The driver was I believe GL358. I've tried running GL357 and GL355 but the computer wouldnt let me install either of them. The firmware on the laser is V2.27srd.

[George M. Perzel]

Arron;
Where are you located? I have a GCC Mercury 1 and may be able to help. Richard pretty well covered the littany of troubleshooting the basic things. Latest firmware is 2.28 and available at Jorlink site as well as instructions on how to load it. Email me direct at gmperzel@rochester.rr.com and we can set up phonecon to discuss.
Best Regards,
George
Laserarts

[George M. Perzel]

Arron is in the UK and I have had a email communication going with him. For the record, he is running Win Vista with a USB to parallel converter cable. "Hidden diagnostic" tests have passed OK.
Best Regards,
George
Laserarts

[Richard Rumancik]

Aaron - Ok, good that you passed diagnostics.

I am concerned about the USB to parallel converter. Yes, I know it used to work. But this system was never designed to be used with that, and you can be sure GCC never tested it with such a device as it did not exist back then. You have been using it for a month . . . sometimes these things work and sometimes they don't.

If it were me I would get a plug-in parallel port board for your PC and run a true parallel port.

I have read that sometimes it is difficult to do a proper un-install of the driver. I am not computer savvy enough to know why, and what the steps are to ensure it is completely removed.

If you are stuck buy or borrow a $50 computer with XP on it, and a parallel port, and install the driver fresh. Then you can troubleshoot from the results of that.

You also need to collect all the manuals for future support of this machine. If you can't find them on-line let us know and we'll see what we can dig up. What year is your machine? Serial number? Synrad laser tube?

[Arron Martin]

Thanks everyone for the support. I've ordered some new cables purely to test and rule out the possibility of cable failure. I'm quite reluctant to spend money although I know it will be inevitable but funds are tight after forking out for the laser not too long ago.

[Kev Williams]

If you're running a USB to Parallel converter cable, I applaud you for ever getting it to work at all! I've never been able to...

I did get a USB to serial cable to work, it lasted about a month and then it started sending garbage to the machine
(the 'machine' would be an ancient Gravo EP module that drives my V3400 cylinder engraver)

As suggested above, you really need an LPT port on your computer to connect a "whole" parallel cable to.

If you don't have a parallel port on your computer, check your motherboard to see if it has any free PCI slots-- they're the WHITE ones-
If SO, get on Ebay and order a couple of PCI LPT printer cards, and get them ordered up--

BUT since time is of the essence, you may check locally for an LPT card, but they're few and far between these days-

other option is an older computer, anything with XP will do, that has an LPT printer port already- fire it up, load your software & drivers and connect up a real cable...

[Chuck Stone]

I've also spent lots of money on the USB to parallel conversion for mine, but
never got it working. GCC says Parallel or serial, nothing else. From what I was
told, there is no USB support in the driver itself and they never had any plans
to add it. (old machines and all of that)
I also don't know if Vista was ever supported, or if the way it handles the ports
is different than XP. My Merc is still on XP/parallel

[Arron Martin]

I honestly don't know how I got it working before, just plugged it in and off I went. I'm going shop around for an old pc with xp and a parallel port. Seems my best and easiest bet.

[Arron Martin]

Right, just ordered myself a nice old pc with xp and my golden treasure that is a parallel port! I'm praying this solves my problems.

[Richard Rumancik]

You are on the right track. It should not cost you a bundle.

Electronics can be like that. Join a bunch of hardware and software together from different eras and it might just work. For a while. Or sometimes. But you need a robust configuration that always works. Best bet is to use what the manufacturer tested and approved and stick to 2000-era hardware. Otherwise you are pretty much on your own.

For what it's worth, if you have the Mercury with the Synrad tube, I have been told that firmware 2.27 and 2.28 has some issues. This came from a guy who used to be on this forum (Viktor from Litographa) and he seemed to know what he was talking about. The 2.27 and 2.28 came after they introduced Deos tubes and so there were different firmware for each type of tube. But Viktor recommended to me that I use 2.25 for my Mercury w/Synrad as it was stable. (That is why I asked if you have the Synrad.) His take was that 2.27 fixed some bugs and added new ones. Your call as to what you do with this info.

Chances are you will get it working by getting rid of the USB adapter. But if you have future problems, you might consider this tidbit of info.

[Arron Martin]

Quick question, I remeber ed I need to upgrade the firmware but I don't know Wether to use the 2.28 deoscoherent or synrad. No idea what either of those are.

[Arron Martin]

I honestly would know if mines sybead or not. Its bad how clueless I am of all this. I'll learn though. I'm hoping when this old computer arrives i can get things up and running and start making an income again.

[Richard Rumancik]

Aaron, you'll soon get really familiar with what is in the box as you will need to support it - you have to realize that this is an older laser and you won't get a whole lot of help from GCC. So if you want to keep it running you need to start collecting whatever support info you can.

I have been assuming all along this is a Mercury I (see the Jorlink picture here):

https://www.jorlink.com/ -> SUPPORT -> LASER DRIVERS-FIRMWARE

https://www.jorlink.com/support/laserdrivers-firmware.aspx

Download the manual and whatever other support material you can find. You might need to print out some sections.

Now, you said that you were running firmware 2.27srd. I think this means you have a SYNRAD tube. But don't take my word for it; get out the screwdriver and open up the back and take a look. While you are in there clean all the fans and make sure they are all working. See if you can find the Synrad label. The tube will probably look like this:

http://photovaclaser.com/plr/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=17
(click on Larger Image)

The Deos/Coherent tube was made by a different manufacturer. In 2002 or 2003 (not sure exactly when) GCC decided they needed another supplier of laser tubes so they went with a Deos tube from Coherent. But it was not exactly plug-compatible so needed different firmware. Since 2.27srd was working then leave it alone for now. I suggest you only flash the firmware if you still can't get it running it with the new PC. You can flash later once you have a stable working system (and are caught up with orders.)
Don't forget my warnings about 2.27 and 2.28. I am using 2.25.

If the tube is dusty brush all the dust off. Have you ever done an alignment? When you have a lull you need to familiarize yourself with how to do this. If you have a procedure already, great. If not, I can probably find one for you. You also need to learn about cleaning lenses and mirrors. Open up the side panel. Ground yourself and reseat the RAM as I suggested before. If you are uncomfortable with this ask a computer guru friend to show you how to remove and reseat the memory sticks.

Read a bit on the forum every day and before long you pick up what you need to know.

Good luck; I sure hope the "new" computer solves the problem. At this point I really don't think it is the laser itself.

[Joe Walmer]

Hello I think I am the one that talked to you on facebook and suggested coming here. How did this end up? I can almost swear it happened to me years ago and I had to get new eeprom chips because nothing i did fixed it untill that.