Has anyone else here had an issue with a controller that wouldn’t boot up? This is the second time this has happened to me and it’s getting frustrating. The first time I unplugged the 12volt supply from the controller and plugged it back in and it booted up, so naturally I assumed that the issue was just a bad connection. Well here I am a couple of weeks later and now I have a controller that won’t boot up no matter what I do. My 8L lathe is only a few months old, so luckily it is still under warranty but I wanted to come here to the forum to see if anyone else has had this issue and if there is something that I don’t know that would fix my problem. When I turn it on it doesn’t even light up the screen at all. I am getting 12 volts to it, and it does make an audible beep every few seconds. Also there’s a green led at the Ethernet port that flashes also. Not sure how relevant any of this is, but it may mean something to someone smarter than me about this controller. Thanks guys!!!
@LARRY_PHILLIPS This one I may consider reaching out to technical support on. Jira Service Management
Do you have an operator console, or a mini pc controller?
Depending on the sequence of beeping, it could be the motherboard beeping a trouble code, or there truly is an intermittent power connection, causing the start up beep.
Well, for sure it must have been some sort of code it was beeping out because it was a very rhythmic beeping…not random or intermittent. But, as I was looking for the information to start a service request, after about 5 minutes of various beeps and such, the screen finally lit up and the controller booted up as it should with everything working properly. The only thing I can think of that might have effect it would have been some extremely cold temps we had here during which our shop temp dipped pretty low also at night. Not sure if that would make a difference since cold temps are usually not detrimental to electronics, but I thought it might be worth mentioning. Anyway, thanks for the response…I guess we’ll see what happens from here.
Larry Phillips
K & L Machine and Automotive
Feel free to come on back and update us! With the extreme cold, I would be curious how the CMOS battery behaves in the cold. For instance, with this last cold snap, my front door bell ‘died’ until it rose above 0 again. And we know that a dead CMOS will generally prevent proper booting. Anyways, keep an eye on it, and report back!
Hey Sam…thanks for being on top of this. I really do appreciate all you guys at Tormach. Your customer service is absolutely second to none. It was much warmer today in the shop and the 8L started up like a champ…I’m thinking that you may be correct about what was going on with the CMOS battery. I’m still going to keep a close eye on it, but I think maybe we can chalk this one up to global warming 
Hope you have a great rest of the week and if anything comes up I’ll let you know. Thanks again!!!
Larry Phillips
K & L Machine and Automotive
Hey Sam,
Pretty sure that we are going to have to address this problem with a service request. I’ve had this problem twice again and it does seem to be temperature dependent. Here in North Carolina it doesn’t get extremely cold usually. The first time it happened though it was extremely cold for our area. Both recent times it wasn’t terribly cold but as soon as I turned on my shop heater and got a little bit of heat in the shop it booted up. I’m mentioning all this in case you know of anything else I can do on my end to alleviate this situation. I took a couple of videos of how it acted before when it wouldn’t boot up and also I e after I cycled the power after the shop had warmed up a bit. I’m going to try to link those here also.
I actually have a job I’m running right now that I’m hoping I can baby it through before making any repairs if necessary.
Thanks,
Larry Phillips
K & L Machine and Automotive
Did anything else come out of this? I am having the exact same issue with my 8L Operator Console. Beeping, and it keeps trying to boot. It will eventually boot after 5 minutes or so, work for maybe 20 minutes, and then go back into a boot loop.
Yes and no. The final solution was to replace the controller. Luckily mine was still under warranty. No idea what was actually at fault causing the issue.
Yours is actually making it just a bit farther in the boot loop than mine was. Mine wouldn’t even display the American megatrends page…the only thing I would get is a black screen and the beep that I heard yours giving as well.
@Harrison_Reed Couldn’t really make out the beeps in the video. Count them and time the spacing between. Motherboards will beep to indicate problems. The number of beeps is the trouble code which then allows you to diagnose. A single beep typically means all’s well.
Without knowing how old your machine is, CMOS batteries cause so many issues and are so cheap to replace that it’s probably worth it to swap yours out just as a diagnostic measure since a bad one can prevent boot up and in some cases can cause random reboots as well.
That’s good to know. I literally just got my machine so I’ve put in a trouble ticket for this. I can’t have the machine go into a boot loop in the middle of a program. Fingers crossed.
Did you have to ship your controller back to them before you could get the replacement?
Thanks for the reply, Larry!
So the beeps were, I think, the initial beep you get when the console begins booting up. The issue is that, within a second or so of that beep, the machine will reboot again, beep again, display the American Megatrends splash screen again, and repeat.
It could be a code giving me information, but I feel like it would sit on the splash screen or something while doing that. Instead it goes black again and does the same sequence, over and over.
The other beep I’m tracking is the lower pitched double beep you get when the boot is finally successful and communication to the machine is established. I only get that after the console is able to go past the Megatrends BIOS logo.
I’ve replaced the CMOS battery, and that was the first solution I tried. It is notable that the time is completely wrong after one of these boot loops. I may try a hard disk restore, if that’s possible, and try to get the machine back on a clean install. It could be that the initial update borked it.
Thanks for you insights!! 
FWIW, very cold is a problem for PCs too. Connections get loose and lose contact, hard drive and fan bearings don’t like to spin, etc, etc. Heat is worse, but most PCs are specced to operate from about 0-35’C (32’-95’F).
Roy, I’ll dig into the console panel and see if something is keeping the fan from running – I hadn’t looked at that yet.
I’m in Virginia right now, so I don’t think the cold is the issue. It is hot here though…
If the time is wrong after you set it properly, then your CMOS battery probably went bad or isn’t making contact… The bad-tasting coatings some companies are putting on them to stop kids eating them (looking at you Duracell) can cause connection reliability issues.
No…they shipped me a new one out within a day…had me pack up the old one in the box and ship it back so they could do a fault analysis on it. Tormach support is second to none…I had two warranty issues with mine and they were fantastic on both issues.
As Roy said, incorrect time is a result of a bad CMOS battery. Of course, it’s to be expected if you already replaced the battery and didn’t set the time properly in the BIOS afterwards. Incorrect time can also cause lots of problems, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a bad RTC time causing boot loops. Even so, I would get into the BIOS, fix the time, and see what, if any affect that has. If it continues to boot loop and the time is thrown off again, that indicates the new battery isn’t good or, as Roy also said, there’s a bad connection to the battery.
So, I am noticing that the Console only has passive cooling. I’m running it in a room that is 80 degrees, so the room is not too hot for a human being. However, I wonder if these consoles should actually have a CPU fan? The console will initially run for about 20 minutes and then it goes into a boot loop. Temperature issue?
I suppose that could be possible, but just as a comparison, I run mine in an non air conditioned shop in North Carolina that routinely reaches into the 90s with no issues. One thing I will say though is that there’s never an issue with too much cooling or air flow…it might be worth installing a small pancake fan at the vents and see what happens.