seeking Foundation Fieldbus guru - troubleshoot bench test FF field transmitters

Update - purchased MobiLink modem is defective

Update - the purchased Softing MobiLink Foundation Fieldbus modem is defective. Although its HART side works OK, the Fieldbus side fails to connect to Pactware, even though the MobiLink is 'seen' in Device Manager.

The MobiLink loaner unit, provided by the Softing USA office, works just fine.

Messages in Device Manager's Events tab indicate an unresolved installation issue. I assume that Softing will either fix or replace the purchased unit.

Thank you, AlfredoQuintero, for all your helpful posts and photos.
 
Update - the purchased Softing MobiLink Foundation Fieldbus modem is defective. Although its HART side works OK, the Fieldbus side fails to connect to Pactware, even though the MobiLink is 'seen' in Device Manager.

The MobiLink loaner unit, provided by the Softing USA office, works just fine.

Messages in Device Manager's Events tab indicate an unresolved installation issue. I assume that Softing will either fix or replace the purchased unit.

Thank you, AlfredoQuintero, for all your helpful posts and photos.
You are most welcome danw. And thanks so much for reporting your solution. Foundation Fieldbus is a great protocol, but it takes a little bit of time to get used to it. It is so unfortunate that your first modem was defective. Mobilink is a great product. I hope your commissioning goes smoothly from now. I am glad my pictures helped you get some reassurance that there had to be a problem somewhere as there actually was. I had the impression you were about to throw the towel. Great that you managed to persevere.
 
The big difference, once I got a working modem, was that in HART, the HART node ID and the HART tag are device DTM objects. In FF, those items are modem DTM objects.


One normally never messes with the HART ID number because 99.9% of HART use is point-to-point comm for configuration, not Multidrop for process communications. Hence, the default HART node 0 address works and a lot of people don't even know that it can be changed. But in FF, the modem DTM has to address the specific device node ID number, and as I found out, they're modem DTM dependent.


I couldn't figure out how to change the PD-Tag because none of the hundreds of parameters in the On-Line Parameterization frame/window/tab was 'Device tag' or 'PD-TAG' or anything related to a tag. I had missed the fact that On-Line Parameterization is under the device DTM, and 'PD-TAG' is not a device DTM object.



I finally found PD-TAG in 'Set Device Address' under the Modem DTM.
 

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