Death of the Simantic (TI) 505?

A salesman told me yesterday the Siemens has stopped producing the 505 series controllers and I/O. They will continue to sell units in stock, but no more units will be produced. Has anyone else heard anything about this? I tend to believe it, Siemens has been promising the death of the line for some time, offering S7 upgrade discounts, migration help etc...
Plus, Control Technologies is promising a direct replacement for the 545/555 line sometime late this year or early next year.

Hello Ken,

While it is true that Siemens has stated what you mentioned, CTI in Knoxville is picking where they left off and running with it. By the end of the year they will have several 505 PLC's available that will run loops (no pun) around the present Siemens offerings. Check out the CTI website for more information. They plan to fully support the product line offering everything that you are used to and more....

They announced this some time ago as their big picture plan; here's the link to their web site:
http://www.controltechnology.com/


Regards,

Tom

I called CTI and spoke with someone in the technical department. While the website mentions Fall 2005 for the new processors. The guy I spoke with said they had encountered unexpected delays, whatever that means, and the new processors would not be out until, hopefully, sometime in the spring of 2006. The old TI plc's used the Motorolla 68000 chips, the new processor is going to use the PowerPC chip. Supposed to be much better all the way around. The problem they are having is they want this new processor to be 100% backward compatible ,and have many new features also. I sure the wait will be worth it. In the past the CTI modules were much cheaper than the Siemens modules, so I'm hoping the new line of processors will be more competitive also.