Siemen is Hilscher adapter

First post to the forum. Just needed some ideas of what is happening.


We are running a Siemen PLC S7-300 in conjunction with a Window 2000 based Allen Bradley PLC with a couple of device net cards.
The Siemen PLC communication with the AB PLC is via a Hilscher netlink mpi adapter lan which connect to the PC ethernet card. Our machine was running along then it shutdown suddenly. My finding was that the communication between the PLC was suddenly disrupted. LED on the Hilsher indicated that no connection with the Ethernet exist. I checked if the PC ethernet card was faulty or if the Hilscher IP and the PC IP address was changed. I also unstall and reinstall the ethernet card. Configuration check out good, ethernet card is good (basically things checked out find, including the Siemen and the AB PLC).

I just could not get communication between the PLCs via the Hilscher adapter cable connected directly to the PC ethernet card. I finally installed a netgear router between the PLCs; communication was successful with the router between the PLCs (I connect the AB Window 2000 based PLC ethernet card to the router ethernet port 1 and the Hilscher adapter from the Siemen was connected to the router ethernet port 2). Note that no configuration was made to the Hilscher adapter, the Siemen, or the AB PLC after the sudden shut down (I simply added a router and connect the cables to the router ethernet port; no configuration to the router was made either).

My conclusion, after the router installation, is that it is not a hardware problem.

Any thoughts?

The question I ask is, can you ping both PLC's and the PC to determine exactly who is not talking to the others.

I can ping both PLCs after I installed the router but I cannot ping any PLCs if the Hilscher adapter is directly connected to the PC ethernet card. The Hilscher always indicate and error 10065; error 10065 is an indication of "no route to host".

What puzzled me is that the PC itself shows the ethernet card is working properly. If the PC ethernet card or the card driver itself is faulty then connection to the router would not be successful. Pinging both was successful only if the router is installed between the PLCs tells me that the IP to both PLCs is correct and the Hilscher adapter is good also.

The Hilscher adapter LED have two indication lights; one is green which indicated power is on and one is yellow which indicated that an ethernet communcation is successful (both have to be ON). When I connect the Hilscher directly to the PC ethernet card, I only get a green light and no yellow light. Also, if I connect the Hilscher adapter to our laptop ethernet port or the router ethernet port, I get both lights ON. When both light is On then we can ping the adapter or make any change to the Hilscher IP, etc.

Can you please give us a list of all the Ethernet addresses of all your items, along with there sub net masks.

My question is that I am looking for is duplicates or mismatches, and making guesses.

We have many customers using he Netlink Adapters and unless you rewire the network cable to be a crossover cable it is alwasy a patch cable. This means that you would have had to have a switch or router in there somewhere.

The ip to the Hilscher is 192.168.0.81 with a subnet of 255.255.255.0.

The PC is configure with an IP of 192.168.0.85 with a subnet of 255.255.255.0.

I don't think it's the configuration IP address, if the IP address was off then it's unlikely the communication would be successful through the router. Remember I did not change any configuration, I simply added a router between the PLCs.

I had though it was a corrupted Windows TCP/IP stack. However, I ping 127.0.0.1. Communication loop back without a problem and that suggested the tcp/ip stack is in order. I could do a tcp/ip stack reset just for the heck of it and see what happened.

We have the machine for several years and I do not see a switch or a router installed (not even internally). By the way, the Siemen PLC is controlling the Mario Cotta knive sytem.

The Mario Cotta tech is supposed to give us some feedback about the problem. We'll wait and see what they said.

Hmmm, just a second thought about router. Windows 2000 can be configure to be a router. This would prevent the need of having to purchased additional hardware. I wonder if the Mario Cotta company did such during the pre-installation of the machine. If the ip routing is not enable or somehow it manage to be corrupt then this would explain why there's no ehternet link. Thus, it make sense when I installed the external router, there's a means to send and receive packet.

Very interesting. I forget about that ability. It is even possible that a Windows security update changed the settings on you. What you don't think that Microsoft would do that?

Please keep us posted on what the tech says.

No words from the tech yet but another problem we been having from day one with the Windows 2000 Allen Badley Siemen combination is that the PC would sometimes lock up, the touch screen would not response, or the screen would go dark. We often have to reboot the computer to get the machine going again. It's usual that we have to reboot several times a week. As a matter of fact, computer reboot was done once on 2nd shift and once on 1st shift (this is in less than a 16 hours periods). In a months times, the rebooting become excessive (I doubt that it is good for the computer). Tech from the Mario Cotta company could not pin point the problem either even to this day. It could be both a hardware and a software problem. This have us scratching our head.