Rslinx serial comm with plc 5/04

Hello. I need some help communicating with my laptop and a plc 5/04. I hooked up what I think is the correct cable and driver, went to auto config and tried several differnet baud rates and parity and it will not communicate. Any help is appreciated.

Check your comm port assignment

what happened when you clicked the AutoConfigure button? ... what message did it display? ...

the cable (a null-modem) should be pin 2-3; pin 3-2; pin 5-5 ...

are any other drivers installed? ...

also ... with NO cable connected, what is the LED marked "RS232" doing on the front of the processor? ... always OFF? ... or FLASHING once every few seconds? ...

All the lights are off except the DH+ which is blinking once every 3 or 4 seconds or so. RS232 is off. I used 1747 cp3 cable hooked directly into the serial port of laptop and channel zero of the processor. Two drivers are configured and running. I selected ab_df1-1 DH485 STA 1 com1. It is configured as comm1, slc-ch0/micro/panelview, 19200, station 1, parity none, crc, 1 stop bit and full duplex.

You need to verify which COM port on your computer you are using. You might only have one COM port, but they can be configured as COM1 or COM2 and in some cases, other COM3 and higher. It's real easy to check.

1. From the Windows Desktop, right click on My Computer and select Manage
2. On the Computer Management window, look on the left side for an option titled Device Manager and click it.
3. On the right side look for the item labeled Ports. You might have to scroll down
4. Expand ports and identify the COM port
5. Verify this matches the setting in the AB_DF1-1 driver configuration.

Out of curiousity, when you select Aito-Configure, do you see any activity on the RS232 lights on the 5/04 cpu?

Oh, and when it is configured properly it won't say "DH485" but instead will say "DH+"

OG

The other driver is configured for ab ETH-1 Ethernet. It has a reg X for 198.213.62.106 unrecognised device. I believe that this is another 5/04 processor in the field that was last communicated to by this laptop. Should I try to use this driver somehow with port 1 of the processor and the serial port of the computer with cable 1761-cbl-pm02

I checked the port on the computer and it is set for 19200, 8, none, 1 stop bit, and flow control is none

Since I am trying to use channel 0 (9pin connection on the procssor) would it not be df1 instead of DH+. I was thinking that channel 1 with the round connection was the dh+??

Operaghost said:

Expand ports and identify the COM port
OG

Click to expand...

No, that wasn't what we were looking for. As I mentioned above, verify that the computer is indeed recognizing that the hardware COM port on your PC is configured as COM1. Most laptops, this is configurable.

OG

10 4. The pc is configured for com 1 as I followed your earlier instructions under device manager.

I was not sure if the flow control should be set for "none."

Do you have a copy of the program in the SLC? Is it in RUN mode?
If you have an offline copy, look at its channel 0 configuration. If you can zip the .rss file and attach it to a post, someone can look at the configuration and help you further.

Don't mess with the Windows PC serial port settings. No changes there should be needed.

So, now that we know how the serial port is setup, and we know that you have RSLinx setup to use COM1 we can now move to the cable and SLC serial port.

As Okie mentions, an offline copy of the project running in the SLC will tell us if the SLC serial port configuration has been altered. That seems likely at this point.

The ethernet driver you mentioned would not be used for the SLC-5/04 as it does not have ethernet. But perhaps it is being used to talk with the 5/05 or maybe some Logix 5000 controllers.

The serial driver when you connect to a SLC-5/01, 5/02, or 5/03 would say DH485 although it is not really using DH485.

The serial driver when you connect to a SLC-5/04 would say DH+ although it is not really using DH+.

The serial driver when you connect to a Logix5000 would say DF1 which is the only one of those that really makes sense IMO.

OG

Great idea. I checked the offline "system configuration" of channel 0 and here is what i found. DF1 full duplex, 19200, parity none, stop bits 1, source id 9, no handshaking, crc, embedded responses enabled, duplicate packet box is checked, ack timeout 50, nak 3, enq 3. Another tab is "Chan. 0 User" and it is configured for ascii, 19200, parity none, 1 stop bit, 8 data bits, no handshaking, delete mode ignore. Channel 1 shows to be configured as DH+ baud 57.6 and node address as 1.

I was wondering if in rslinx, under the configuration of the ab-df1 driver, should it be device "PLC-ch0" or slc-cho/micro/panelview as it is configured now. I have not tried it as PLC-ch0. Also does it matter that both the configured drivers ab_df1 dh485 and ab_eth-1 ethernet are running at the same time in relinx? I tried selecting each one and hitting the stio button, but they both say that they cannot be stopped