How to upgrade AB SLC500 Communication

Hi! I have an almost 20 year old AB SLC 500 PLC (fixed i/o, 40 points). It uses a 1747-AIC DH-485 Link Coupler over a 100 meter communication cable (A, B, Common) to a 1761-NET-AIC module that connects to a pc by RS-232. The pc is running rslinx using the 1747-PIC/AIC+ driver. The version of rslinx I have only works on Windows XP SP2, which I would like to upgrade to a pc with Windows 7 or newer. I downloaded a free version of rslinx but it does not include the above driver. It seems most posts I have seen refer to a UIC driver. I tried that with the above hardware setup and it did not work. I would appreciate any suggestions other than replacing the PLC! My pc running rslinx is located 100 meters from the SLC 500 PLC. Thank you all for your time!

Have you tried configuring a RSLinx driver using RS-232 DF1 that connects to the DB-9 of 1761-NET-AIC? Assuming you are using a USB to RS-232 converter on your Win7 PC. You also did not state which new version of RSLinx you are trying to use.

Welcome to the PLCTalk forum community !

The old 1747-PIC/AIC+ driver cannot run on any version of Windows newer than Windows XP SP2, which is why that driver is not selectable on your modern PC.

You need a 1747-UIC device.

That runs the DF1 Full Duplex driver over USB on the side connected to your computer, and runs the DH485 driver on the RS232/RS485 side. The microcontroller onboard that device does all the tricky DH485 handshaking that Windows computer serial ports just can't do anymore.

My understanding is that the 1747-UIC is compatible with even the very old SLC-5/01 and Fixed SLC controllers.