VB to S7-300 communication

Hello I'm trying to make a VB application that could read and write memory areas from a S7-300 PLC. I found this text from a thread on this forum and it looked very promissing:

If your using a cp-343-1 Ethernet card and you're familiar with windows programming using sockets & COM objects you can access the PLC using Native TCP directly without any drivers etc..

Sadly there was no further info on that. Could someone please show me where to start or even share an example application.

I have tried S.Rothenbacher's S7 TCP/IP ActiveX and got it working, but I would like to check out more ways before choosing.

I would also appreciate any info on how fast can I possibly read and write data to my PLC.

I'm using:
- S7-300 (CPU317-2 DP)
- CP 343-1
- Visual Basic 2005 Express

There are VB6 examples in the downloads area of this site.

Look in the siemens folder for Sendrecvdemo.Zip + fchwrtdemo.zip

The only .Net examples i have seen have been bundled along with a Netlink adaptor i purchased sometime ago, Unfortunately they are tailored towards the adaptor specifically.

regards

Hello JumpyPLC;
For Native TCP comms with a CP343-1, you will find a document under Downloads (look on the site's banner), in the Siemens section. It is called SendRecvDemo.zip, and it contains cosde and docs by DesertDog. A good place to start.
Hope this helps,
Daniel Chartier