FYI: Powerflex 700 v6.3, CLX via 20-Comm-E

Just a heads up for anyone that may hit this problem....

Last night, attempting to commission a new panel with 5 PF700VCs, 480V of various sizes (5A, 22A, 65A). After using BootP to set IPs, dumping the PLC program, etc. I was getting error 16#0109 w/ the yellow triangle on each drive. I have the latest CLX, the latest AOP file (Drive profiles for CLX), the latest EDS files, the latest RSlinx, etc. At first it was because I had a module mismatch (6.2 in program vs 6.3 in drives). Here's where it gets strange:

When going to the general tab of the drive properties, selecting CHANGE for the module, and selecting minor version 3 for the drive, the listbox for the size of the drive would not give me any options. Go back to 6.2 and I get all the HP sizes. 6.3, nada. WTF?

So, I call Rockwell support and at first they are stymied. Able to replicate the problem on their end too. But to their credit they came up with a solution, and honestly one I wouldn't have thought of...

Solution: Using Drive Executive (I'd been SOL without it), do a Database create for each drive. This will connect to the drive and extract the parameter set. Once that's done, shutdown Logix5000, restart and re-open the drive property and CHANGE. Voila! Now the list box is populated with different sizes, but with only the drives you were able to connect to. Kindof an issue with offline development, but at least a workaround to get everything commissioned.

I've never heard of that particular solution, so I thought I'd post it for future posterity. Seems like I'm forever running into versioning issues everytime a new drive, I/O module or software comes in

Similar thing happened to me twice.

I have 16 PF700VC 480V of 65A, 125A, 180A, 248A and initially commissioned the 65A ones. I then preped the the ControlLogix program for the new drives but could not get anything other than 65A for the drive sizes. I had to connect to drives and it would tell me the correct size of the drive (180A) but with communication errors as ControlLogix thought it was 65A, then I could go offline with ControlLogix and change the drive size to the correct size (180A), then download the entire program again to connect to the drive properly. I didn't think of using Drive Exec.

The Other time a 65A drive died after a week of operation, so we got a replacement one under warranty. This had the updated firmware 6.002 instead of 4.010 that every other drive had (and the AB website had 4.010 as the highest version that you could download), so I had to connect to the drive with our spare controller to get the database, then when it was talking, I could change the firmware down to version 4.010.