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Subject: RE: Options for reviving old Allen Bradley PLC implementations
From: "Al Honey" <[email protected]>
To: "Al Honey" <[email protected]>, "Chestnut, Ronald P." <[email protected]>, <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2010 10:08:48 -1000

I should have mentioned that the abDf1 driver functions virtually flawlessly.

 

However, there is a suspected bug in one of our vxWorks drivers: either the AbDf1 or CmSx (a driver for the older Compmotor controllers -AX?- which was also written for the Keck observatory by Jeff Hill but with major additions by me). I have spend a lot of time trying to find that bug to no avail. The problem could be in the CmSx driver and not the AbDf1 driver, but, the outgoing task, when the page 0 write, occurs is typically AbDf1. As the problem may not occur for years (seemingly until the electrical slip rings become noisy –i.e. the serial connection to the AB PLCs) it is hard to find and rarely affects operations.

 

Al

 

 

 

 


From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Al Honey
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 9:54 AM
To: Chestnut, Ronald P.; [email protected]
Subject: RE: Options for reviving old Allen Bradley PLC implementations

 

At the Keck observatory we are still driving our dome enclosures with two Allen Bradley SLC 5 PLCs (one is the 500 and the other is older) using the abDf1 driver (that is a one not an eye J), which was written for the observatory by Jeff Hill in 1995 (there have been a few tweaks in the intervening years – some by Nick Rees, I believe- but they are minor). The abDf1 driver requires drvSerial, which was also written for the observatory by Jeff Hill in 1995 (we have tweaked that driver as well).

 

Both drivers have been further modified so that they can function in a Unix IOC (R 3.14.n), separate drivers I think. We control other Allen Bradley PLCs (including, I think, a couple of RSLogix PLCs that are used for laser safety systems – I can confirm that if you need) from Unix IOCs.

 

If you have the AB manuals, for the older PLCs,  the DF1 protocol is described in detail therein.

 

Allan Honey

 

 

 


From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Chestnut, Ronald P.
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 9:31 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Options for reviving old Allen Bradley PLC implementations

 

We have a number of old Allen Bradley PLC implementations here at SLAC. One of these uses a Data Communication Card (DCM) in VME is connected to the SLC5 SLC500s. One path we are considering is using an RSLogix PLC (which has good EPICS support) as the master PLC, and slaving the SLC5 PLC to that. It turns out that there exists a package to translate the ladder logic from SLC500 to RSLogix.

 

Another group here is asking the following:

 

“We have some old SLC 5/04 PLCs from Allen Bradley that we wanted to make EPICS compatible. I found a third party SLC module that talks Ether/IP:

 

Will this module work to provide the EPICS support? “

 

Another piece of information is from Ernest Williams: He warned us against the direct SLC-50x EPICS driver support, since it uses its own protocol (DFI?) and has a poor reputation and poor support.

 

So the questions to the community are

 

How are you reviving old PLC support? What has or has not worked? What do you recommend?

 

 

Ron Chestnut

 

 

 


References:
Options for reviving old Allen Bradley PLC implementations Chestnut, Ronald P.
RE: Options for reviving old Allen Bradley PLC implementations Al Honey

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