ATA Card / SRAM card compatibility with Fanuc and Mitsubishi controls

PC cards are generally used on machine tools for easy program transfer and data backup. Using this option you can avoid pulling out the laptop to setup the RS232 protocol.

ATA Card and SRAM card compatibility and recommendations

Compatibility, unfortunately is not documented very well. It seems that none really knows if anything will work for sure. Fanuc has a small sheet of what they have used. There are many brands and adapters you can use and adapt to pcmcia cards. I only recommend one form factor that should work for every control you have, and that is SRAM cards. They are the most commonly used today, however; our ATA stye PCMCIA flash cards will work on most of the controls from 2003-2006 as long as they are 32mb or less. The size of the files that are transferred or backed up are very small, especially for older machines.

SRAM card spec compatibility

Must be ordered with 2k attribute
2mb-4mb capacity card- preferable 2mb
Expensive and low capacity compared with ATA

ATA card compatibility

I would highly recommend staying with compact flash card form factor and stick with the sandisk brand. Many Fanuc reps and machine tool distributors have said that about 95% are compatible. Also, stick with a very small card, if possible preferably 32mb or less. I have used various other brands and have had some difficult problems. Below there is a common setup for ATA compact flash card shown. Desktops usually do not have a PCMCIA card slot, so that is why compact flash is used because adapters are readily available.

The newest Fanuc I series controls will generally accept up to a 4-gigabyte card, either SRAM or ATA. Older controls like 16,18 and 21 all depend on whether it is model A or model B control etc.

Compact ATA flash card computer example setup

The PCMCIA card adapter will have the compact flash card inserted into it to download the data out of the machine. Once the data is on the compact flash card, pull it out and put in the compact flash card reader. This Device plugs into the USB port and will come up on your computer as another drive. The data can be accessed like anything else on your computer hard drives. Any Brand, PCMCIA compact flash adapter, or Compact flash reader may be used for this.

PCMCIA to Compact flash adapter (Any Brand)

Compact flash data storage card (Sandisk brand only most compatible)

Compact flash reader for USB port (Any brand)

For additional information see below

Setting up and using ATA and SRAM cards devices

SRAM card driver installation and setup

USB to serial port adapter compatibility and setup

COM port setup