SIEMENS TI-505 and 5434-FMS Comms

Hi I work for a pharma company in the Utilities Department. We have a Wonderware SCADA system that consists of about 32 Siemens TI-505 PLC's. Data is packed in the logic in to V-memory and then the 5434-FMS cards are then configured with a separate configuration utility (COM 5434 Configurator). From this card is connected a Profibus FMS network that can allow PLC's to talk to each other but from looking at the FMS configurations it looks like the network is mostly used as a bridge to wonderare. Anyway I came into this new but I work with two other technicians that have more experience with these and they had previously backed up all configurations on these cards. We had one of the cards faulting a few weeks ago which is intermittent but in the process of replacing the card and downloading the configuration into it using com5434 We weren't able to communicate with it. (COMS Failed) You get the option of 4 com ports and 3 baud rates 9, 19 and 34. We have tried all configurations old laptops with physical serial ports newer laptops with USB to serial and Express port to serial as well as one laptop running VMs (mine) on several different operating systems. We are wondering what changed and why we can no longer talk to them. They communicate to the network just fine through the profibus FMS port. but no RS-232. Also the RS-232 port does function as we are able to go online with the PLC's either through that one or the RS-232 port on the processor. I discovered that one by accident. BTW we are using Fast Trak Workshop 505 version 4.81. Any input would be great.

First thing to check, what was the jumper status on header E1 for both the old failed module and the new module. They should match. This will also tell you what baud rate it is expecting.

Software wise, odd that you can get online w/ the PLC through the card but not the card.
What is the status of the front LEDS on the module?

should have mentioned that I have a test plc at my desk. Good point on checking the jumper for the baud rate and I have checked that. As far as I know the jumper is set the same on all of the plc in the field they should be set to 19200. As far as the LED lights on the test plc all lights are lit up solid on the PLC with the field communication card all 3 lights flash red. This indicates a major fault as I said the problem is intermittent and we know when the card is faulted as we lose call data from that process what are wonderware application

Try creating a shortcut to the COM5434.
Right-click it and click properties.
Try the different operating system compatibly settings (work from XP SP2/SP3 backwards).

It's definitely better to try a native Windows XP (or older) computer with a built-in serial port. The cable is the same as the programming cable for the TI505 CPUs.


Cable pin-out:
3 - 2
2 - 3
5 - 5

1-4-6 jumpered on both sides
7-8 jumpered on both sides

Thanks SigmaDelta. I will try that. The cable I currently use is an AB 1747-CP3 I will double check this pin out. If it isn't correct I will make one and try what you suggest. Definitely will let you know the out come.

So I have tried it with the specified cable and made note of the jumper setting on the board (19200) and still no luck. I am thinking maybe I need an old laptop or even a desktop with windows 95 on it. My colleagues have assured me they have been able to communicate to these with Windows XP but don't remember the last time they did it successfully.

Fixed

I am happy to say this issue has been resolved. I bought an old Dell laptop on eBay that had windows 98 SE installed. I installed the COM 5434 Configurator software on this laptop tested my connection at the Baud rate the card was set for and was able to get a Comms success. One thing to note I cannot say that Windows 98 was the entire contributing factor because I also had no other automation software on this laptop that could interfere with the COM port drivers in this instance. Thanks for all your suggestions.

Wow... good to know. I think a Virtualbox virtual PC with a new Windows 98 SE install should have worked as well.

Has anyone managed to establish communication with a CP5434 using a Windows XP laptop?

We have a couple of 5434-FMS cards that were installed in the late 1990s. After considering using another FMS card for another PLC, we realised that these cards actually need to be programmed

We have loaded the COMM5434 code onto an old XP laptop, that we generally use for programming the TI505 PLCs, but we can't get it to communicate with the (working) FMS card. We want to save the existing programs because they are not backed up

The PLC itself is reasonably heavily loaded communications wise, and generally we can only talk to the PLC through the serial port on the Ethernet Card (We have a Citect system)

Back when this was an issue for me a few years ago the only luck that I had was with the Windows 98 laptop which I later virtualized. Before that I had tried it with virtual and non virtual instances of Windows XP service pack 3 as well as Windows 2000. The COM5434 software will run on just about any operating system you try to run it on and you can even configure the settings of the card but something doesn't work with the com settings and it just will not communicate. Save yourself some heartach e and just try to find a Windows 98 laptop If you have a way to run VMware I can help you locate a virtual instance of Windows 98.

Thanx Josh,

I think we might try and buy ourselves a W98 laptop. Most of our plant is controlled by a DCS, and we also have a lot of Siemens S7 PLCs. The TI505 PLCs were all installed in the 1990s

Given that we do little development on the TI505 PLCs, we are using still using TISOFT2 to program them, even if we have upgraded to V7.1, mainly because of the quality of the documentation. We use 505 Workshop for connecting via Ethernet for troubleshooting and small online changes

I started programming Texas PLCs using TISOFT, and we moved up to TISOFT2 in the late 1980s

BTW ... TISOFT2 became very painful when we transitioned to later versions of Windows. Under W3.11, you were actually running TISOFT2 in DOS mode. Communication became an issue with later versions

Josh,

Also thanx for the quick reply, I posted the message just before midday on Thursday and you managed to reply Wednesday evening

No problem I like to be helpful when dealing with this because there's not a lot of information out there about FMS communications. I've been in the process of upgrading most of our peer link communications via FMS to ethernet through the CTI-2572B modules and have had much success with broadcasting information between PLCs in a somewhat produce and consume manner.

If you ever need any pointers doing that you can email me @ [email protected]

Hello hawley beach

I think you already know that the 5434-FMS cards are very old and hard to get.
In our plant we used the 1434-TF H1 modules and with a software package called H1 configurator you could download the software. It would run in a xp vm and you could use a USB to serial converter. You also write that you have a lot of TI plc,s running. Are you considering to replace them by another platform? In 2008 we replaced our TI plc,s with CTI 2500 plc,s and later for the H1 modules we used the 2500 ECC cards so that the plc,s could communicate to each other and to scada using kepware opc. Scada was because Wizcon did support the sinec H1 driver but not the Ti ethernet tcp ip protocol cp2572 that was called I beleave. With the ECC module you could also let the Cti plc,s communicate to devices that supported modbus tcp both as client or server. Anyway i think that you need a plan to upgrade the system because at the end it Will be more and more difficult to keep the old stuff running.

Kind regards
Henny