uploading

My company laptop has RS5000 and a RS500 Starter Kit loaded in it.
We have several production machines with Micrologix 1000, 1500 and
SLC 500. My question is can I upload into the Starter Kit RS500 or
The RS5000 environment? I realize I would have to switch an RS5000
controller to Program when uploading , but question if I have to do the same with a SLC500 or Micrologix controller. (We lost the "good"
laptop to a 10 foot drop on the floor!)

Another Question deals with the AICs attached in the Panels. We use these to access the controllers with our laptop. A question has come up, can
we use the existing DH485 ports on these AICs to take our data to a central PC for monitoring. Is DH485 fast enough or should we go with
the AIC with Ethernet capabilities?
Thanks for your help. Beaumack

You can UPload (from a controller into a PC) from any A-B controller (PLC, SLC, MicroLogix, ControlLogix) while it is in RUN mode. You only need to put a controller in PROG mode to perform a DOWNload of a new program.

As for DH485 networking being "fast enough"..... that depends on what you need out of it. I try to use Ethernet for wide-area networking, but sometimes DH485 is just fine.

How much data do you need, how fast, from how many controllers, how far away ?

For the record...

beaumack1984 said:

Is DH485 fast enough or should we go with
the AIC with Ethernet capabilities?

Click to expand...

The DH-485 interface is:
1761-NET-AIC

The ethernet interface is:
1761-NET-ENI

Thanks for your reply, to clarify will the SLC500 and Micrologix
existing programs upload to the RS500 starter Kit program without
problems? At this time it's all we have as an outside environment
to upload to since the dammaged laptop had our only source of
"maintenance" and copies of existing programs?

As far as the AIC's The distance is a max of 200 feet, 10 seperate
controllers and data will be 16 words per machine.
beaumack.

Aha, I might be sensing a red light here....

When you say "Starter Kit software", you might mean one of two things:

1. RSLogix 500 Starter.
2. RSLogix 500 Starter "that came with a starter kit".

Believe it or not, these could be different. There is a MicroLogix starter kit that is sold with a 10-point MicroLogix controller and includes a copy of RSLogix 500 Starter software that supports ONLY the 10-point MicroLogix. It won't work with any other MicroLogix or SLC controller.

If your RSLogix 500 Starter came free with a 10-point controller, you should find that it is not able to upload other MicroLogix and SLC programs. It won't hurt them, but it won't do anything useful either.

If you really do have an ordinary copy of RSLogix 500 Starter, the only things you won't have access to are online editing and online cross-reference. No big deal, neither of these functions are needed for uploading.

I am right now switching out DH485 for DeviceNet on a system that has two PanelView Plus terminals and two SLC-5/03 controllers. I am seeing a HUGE improvement in performance using Net-DNI interfaces instead of 1747-AIC isolators. But this is an application where I need to get updates of the PanelView screens every 100 milliseconds.

If you need your data every several seconds or minutes, then 10 stations is within the capabilities of DH485. 200 feet is no problem, because the isolated RS485 wiring of DH485 is good for about 4000 feet.