Mazak Mazatrol programming. Anybody use it?

[Shoxthemonkey 1992]

We have an old Mazak Slant-Turn lathe (199?) with Mazatrol T32-3 controls. It has limited memory so our operator has been dumping old programs to clear space for new jobs. Not a problem as long as the programs that are dumped are one-off jobs that will never be repeated.  We have reached the point that everything left in memory is something that we need to keep. The problem is that Mazak controls don't allow us to download these programs to a laptop or PC. There is a single RS-232 port for data transfer. Have any of you figured out a way to do this? A quick google shows several 3rd party software packages available that purport to do this and we are going to download some free trials from a couple of them to look at. It doesn't sound like the trial versions have the transfer capabilities enabled so I doubt that we can witness what we actually want it to do for us. It's probably a longshot but are there any programmers/shop owners here that know this shit?

I'm not a controls guy so use small words and talk to me like I'm in 4th grade.

Edited August 12, 2020 by Shoxthemonkey

[davidg 4057]

I don't deal with machine tools but this is probably what you want. Contact them and find out how much it costs and determine if its worth it for you.

http://www.griffobros.com/datatransfer.htm

 

[Shoxthemonkey 1992]

Thanks. I just sent an inquiry to them.

[davidg 4057]

$800 for the data transfer portion in 2016 per 

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/mazak/mazatrol-t-pc-communication-offline-editor-325069/

[Shoxthemonkey 1992]

I just talked to the saleslady and was quoted $1100 for that package. Seems reasonable enough.