Omron c200hs problem ...

[marq]

Help please if u can...
We have thisk ind of problem now, I have tried many cable connections(including fullhandshake protcol) and we still have this mysterious problem with our link to omron, from client computer (where the controlling program runs) sending data to omron takes a long while, and the control program reports this kind of errors, "error receiving bad characters" and "time out"
I have tried allmost everything, changed the time out parameter from control program from 200 to 400 and it didnt help, is it possible that omrons port is damaged or something?
parameters for connection is:
com port 9pin->25pin rs232c 9600kbps, 7data, even, 2stop
does the changing of line speed help in this kind of problems, eg. from 9600->4800?
Has anybody got similar problems with omron?

[Jay Anthony]

Sorry,but....
The Hostlink port only does what is told to do and is very robust as far as error control.

I suspect the computer application hasn't covered all possible error conditions that could happen when sending commands to a Hostlink port, such as trying to write to a protected area (DM6128-DM6555), trying to write to any register when the PLC is in the RUN mode rather than the MONITOR mode, trying to read past the end of a memory boundary, etc.

You need either a data tap analyzer or a Data Tap in conjunction with Comm port "snooping" software. If you can do this, post the results here and several of us can analyze the commands and responses.

[Sleepy Wombat]

In regards to the Snooping software :handball: download a little applicaiton called PortMon..an excellent freeware utility..

Follow link below...

Port Mon Link (http://forum.mrplc.com/index.php?act=Downloads&CODE=01&cat=37) :D

[marq]

Hello again, havent yet made the com tapper...
But one qustion came to mind, is there this possibility, that when I changed the older control pc to a newer one, that the newer one could have a different serial circuit?
the older pc was 486sx and the newer one is pentium 100
all i did, was that i changed the harddrive to new computer, and checked that the irq and memory areas were exactly the same as they were in 486sx, im not sure that this relates to this issue, but i think its worth asking??

[Jay Anthony]

Serial port is a serial port. They should be the same.

[marq]

But I was wondering if there is any differencies because of 486 sx had a com port in the IO card and this newer computer has the com port integrated to motherboard, therefore if there is any differencies between those?

[JesperMP]

Yes there can be a difference !
Particularly laptops are notorious for having low voltages on the serial port generally, or lowering the voltages when applying powersaving schemes.

I suspect newer desktops also start to have such "smart" features.
Try to disable all powersaving features.
If you can, try another PC.
You new PC could also have a problem with noise. Do you have a ground leg in the supply cable and supply outlet ?

[marq]

I´m not sure, have to check it out, does the com1 cable need to be grounded to the pc end?

[marq]

I´m nearly in dead end of this issue, i´ve now tried the pc with vlb multi io controller, and still the same errors occur, im not sure if i have to make the com tapper machine or what, the error finding is wery difficult because im not sure where to start looking the problem,
not sure have i mentioned that we have the same kind of control system in siemens s5 logic and it works perfectly(without this bad characters or time out errors)
i´ve been told that this omron logic has been before also s5 siemens and it has been modified for omron, could this have caused some errors?
all i know that the error is only that something in omron denies the update requests from the conrol computer or control computer sends wrong data or data to wrong memory area of omron?

btw can i use syswin to see if the data is corrupted, in the time sending the goods from control computer to omron, could syswin show whats the problem?

I know i´m really a newbie in controlable logics....

[Jay Anthony]

The fact of the matter is that until you take a sample of the data stream coming out of the computer port and coming out of the PLC port, you will still be unable to determine the problem. Several people have advised you to do this and offered to help analyze the data, but until we get a sample of this data, all suggestions will be merely a quess.

[marq]

Ok so I must do this data snooper machine, hope I can make it work
how can i do the pin configuration between the cables?
should i use the exact diagram as the original cable?

[Jay Anthony]

I just used PortMon posted by Sleepy Wombat to sample a Hostlink communication. No special cable - just the one used in your application. Portmon must run on the same computer that is currently polling the C200HS. The host computer must be running at least Win95x.

[Jay Anthony]

If the host computer does not use a Windows OS, then you will not be able to use PortMon. You then need to make a data tap cable which will need to be inserted in the cable between the host computer and the C200HS. It will have four connectors - two for the data tap and two to be connected to a separate computer.
You can start out with hyperterminal but it will only handle one port at a time. You need the C200HS side so that you can see the error codes which are being passed back to the host computer.

[marq]

So there has been a while with this problem, and now it rised up again, Jay could you make something out from the data that i´ll record with the portmonitor software, can the problem be solved anyway with analyzing the data that the control computer sends to omron?

So if anyone can help me with this, post here, that i´d know to upload the data to here?