Pathpilot booting

PathPilot
1

Hi all, I’ve recently inherited a PCNC1100 series 3 with every bell and whistle except the controller, for some reason. Figured that wasn’t a problem when I found out, I’ve still got the PP install disk and a pile of old PCs so I stick a Mesa 7I92T in one, install Pathpilot, both start up without problems and… Mesa card not detected, PP won’t start. From what I can gather online, this is probably because the old version of Pathpilot on the disk can’t handle any cards fresher than 2015 or so but PP2 will, so I buy a Pathpilot 2 stick and… it’s not a bootable drive, I can’t get to the update dialogue (or any dialogue) on the existing install, because PP won’t start.

I’m not blindly throwing a thousand dollars for a redundant new controller at a machine I can’t even verify does more than turn on, so I’m about ready to just give it up as wasted trouble and figure out what I’d have to do to this thing to run it with Mach3. Before I do, is there a way around this Mesa card check, either a way to convince PP to boot up in sim mode when it can’t detect the hardware it wants so I can update it or just install PP2 from zero without first needing to install Pathpilot 1 and then upgrade?

2

Have you opened a ticket with support? I would love to hear how this works out. It seems to me you should be able to run this on any computer. Keep us in the loop!

3

Check out post #5 in this thread over on industry arena. Seems to have helped others. It’s largely talking about installing PP in a virtual machine but it seems like the changes should get you around the mesa check long enough to install PP1 so that you can update to 2.

4

Thank you! I was able to make some real progress running it in a VM, enough to find out that there’s something wrong with the stick they sent, and I probably could’ve just installed straight to 2 from there if it was working properly. Attempting to update using it throws an error code that I can’t update without a real Tormach USB stick, takes me right back to old-fashioned 2000s DRM that’d randomly decide whatever CD you’d bought was illegitimate. I could get Pathpilot up to 1.9.13 from the installer on the website and it tentatively appears to be recognizing the mesa card now, so that’s something. Messaging support about the rest.