Alternative Virtual PLC

Hi Guys,
Does anyone know of an virtual PLC similar to RS Emulate.
I need one for testing programs created for AB and general training. The RS Emulate price tag is on the expensive side for me.
What are you using? If its a Virtual PLC that requires the user to do things such as input mapping that would be even better
Best one so far is EasyPLC since you can use Machines Simulator with it.
Is RS emulate good value?

Well, I can say that RS emulate is not a good value. However, I can't recommend any alternatives that would run a Rockwell project. Since Rockwell has such a huge user base, I'm sure one exists (Emulate is just a special VxWorks virtual machine), but they would need to charge you for the VxWorks license to run or automatically turn of after a short time to avoid the license fee.

Remember that RSEmulate 500 for the popular MicroLogix family of controllers is free of charge. If you're just doing training, that's a good value.

http://www.rockwellautomation.com/rockwellautomation/support/plc/micrologix.page


For the ControlLogix family, you won't find anything other than Emulate 5000.

You can do it the hard way.
toggle the bits, timers, I/o on each rung and scan the program that way. its hard, but you can do it.


regards,
james

thanks for the feedback guys.

Just did more searching and I think I've started confusing myself.
Could someone please explain the differences between RS emulate5000 and RS Softlogix?
Are they the same thing?:S Please help.

Good question, both are VxWorks virtual machines, but Emulate5000 is only for testing and pretends to be whatever PLC you select, while SoftLogix is a full blown PLC running on a PC. Emulate does not take over the CPU and create a real-time environment, so your PLC program will run slower and experience slowdowns if Windows is doing something, but Windows will continue to run normally. SoftLogix does take over the CPU and run a hard real-time environment and meters out CPU usage to Windows. This makes SoftLogix run quickly and reliably, but Windows will probably slow down a lot.

Just an FYI, a ControlLogix is an ARM based PC basically, running VxWorks as its operating system. SoftLogix may be slightly less reliable, but only because it is running next to (not on top of) Windows and Windows can pull some dastardly **** sometimes.