Printing out a PLC2 LAD file

Hi guys,

Upgrading a PLC2 to CompactLogix. I have a VERY old laptop running the PLC2 software. How can I get a hard copy printed out? No chance I can hook this to our networked printer. I guess I'm hoping there is an export function that will allow me to take the file to a modern PC and print. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Kraken Fan #69

krakenfan69,

in the ab version of the plc2 software, there is the ability to print the file to a document. It has been too many years since I worked with a plc2 and a cannot remember the exact procedure. Its in the printer section.

if you can't find it, you might call your local rep for help.

regards,
james

You can do it the hard way

ICOM, Topdoc or 6200. If you have to you can print screen each page. If I remember it only supported dot matrix printers because they were DOS programs. I think you can print to text file.

In a lot of those old software programs when you get to the point in the printing process where you select where to print it, it should say com1, com2, LPT1, or file. Type a new name of a file, 8 letters or less, (might have to backspace the old choice 1st). Go ahead and print or save this file with the old software. Next, open the saved file in Notepad and print it from there.

Edit:
If you have no luck, just zip and post the plc2 files here and I or somebody will try to make a .pdf file that you can print.

When I try to print from the software (PLC-2 Ladder Logistics is all I see for a name) it throws up a DOS Write error. Its running on an old Win98 machine. The Dos window on this old beast is not much larger than my iPhone. Thus the desire to print the logic out, plus it make jumping back and forth easier too..

Kraken Fan #69

You should be able to print it out to a .TXT file, but if that doesn't work for some reason, what I do is to install PDF Xchange and set it up as the default printer.

Then I just print my file out to a .PDF. From there, I can capture all of the text (pretty messy though) and save it to a .TXT file.

I've created a program in VB.Net that takes that mess, and the "normal" PLC5 files, and uses it to make the remote racks for my RSLogix5000 conversions (it creates the rack I/O, and the names for the I/O that was used in the PLC5 and saves it in a .L5K compatible file format).

It also does the search and replace from the output of the Rockwell conversion program's I/O to my new RSLogix5000 tags, deletes the old PLC5 I/O tags, removes PCE errors, finds duplicates, and I'm in the process of fixing the PCE timer errors as well.


If you like, please send me your .TXT file, I'd like to have a look at it.

Thanks Rootboy,

What I figured out was I was getting the DOS Write Error because I had left the default printer port to LPT1 and not changed that to a file name logic.txt for instance as JRWB4GBM had suggested. The next hurdle was setting the folder it would "print" that file to. I now have a file but the ladders are all kinda garbled with ^^^^^^^^^^^^ and wonky ASCI fonts.

Arrrgh! Breath....In.....Out...Repeat...

Kraken Fan #69

What you may have ended up with is the file in the printer's format saved as a text file. I should look pretty much like standard ladder logic.

In other news, I tried printing out my RS5K project to a .PDF file the other night. After printing out 12,900+ pages to my .PDF file, RS5K crashed. Gotta love Rockwell!

I'm seeing that i should have turned off some options like printing the cross reference next to each I/O Point as well. Less clutter.

EDIT. Yeah much less busy with out the XRef printing out.


Kraken Fan #69

Mad respect to Rootboy for his help. Thanks to all the other posters as well. Rootboy suggested installing NotePad++ to help find and replace formatting errors. Yeah, do that. it's wicked. I have a useable reference now.

Thanks again everyone!

Kraken Fan #69

Thanks!

And NP++ comes with all sorts of add-ons as well. TextFX is one of the "must haves".