plc 5/40e enet comm fault

I have a PLC 5/40E that is giving me a comm error 01E00204. It was working fine until a power outage yesterday. What does that error mean? I have checked the routers and they appear to be working. The enet light will flicker when you first reboot the PLC, but shuts off shortly after.

Thanks in advance!

That's the error code for a timeout. The software (probably RSLinx) can't communicate at all with the controller.

Check basic Ethernet connectivity by using PING and HTTP.

If those don't work, try connecting the BOOTP/DHCP utility to a local switch to see if this PLC-5E has returned to default settings and is sending out BOOTP packets.

If it's not, you need to connect in some other way; probably the easiest is through the serial port with a null-modem cable like the Allen-Bradley 1784-CP10.

I went serial with PCMK with another laptop. Are there other ways to connect with a PLC 5 other an PCMK? I had to find an other laptop that was able to use the card.

That 1784-PCMK design is pretty old; I actually couldn't get it to run on my Latitude D630 and had to revert to a D610 for some PLC-5 work.

The serial port is the down-and-dirty way to connect to a PLC-5 Enhanced controller. Be sure to increase the data rate from the default 2400 baud to 19200 as soon as you can.

DH+ connectivity was done with 1784-KT, 1784-KTX, 1784-PKTX(D) and the 1784-PCMK card in the past.

There is a modern DH+ interface, the 1784-U2DHP, which connects via USB to Data Highway Plus.

Although it's not officially supported, I've seen the 1784-U2DHP used with Windows 7 and RSLinx Classic 2.56.