Microbrewery controller problem

Hi all,
I've been lurking around here for some time and finally have a question to post. It's a shot in the dark but I told the owner of this brewery I'd throw it out here.

They have a Xenia bottle labeling machine that came from Italy. It has a SHS MCU02 integrated OIT/controller. Kind of like a one piece PLC/panelview. I don't have, and can't find any documentation on this controller.

The controller originally lost all the variables but retained the program. After a while of troubleshooting, it locked up, and after a re-boot, the initial screen calls for a keypress. I re-booted this machine several times with no problem, but now it echo's the * character, and after 4 times, refreshes the screen and you get to enter 4 more ****'s.. I tried the password, and it doesn't work either. Does anybody have a manual for this thing that explains this?

I did manage to cob together the wiring enough to get the machine to limp along, and they are labeling their beer. I am trying to get them to spring for a micrologix and a little OIT and junk this SHS thing.

Thanks!

Are you sure it's a PLC. In my experience many of the Italian packaging machines are PC controlled. There's usually an embedded PC controller and they run a custom OS and software. I have one such beast and we had to pay for a guy to fly over from Italy to make one minor change.

I think the option of switching to something more readily supported may be your best option.

You could be right. On your system was there some kind of serial port connector? This one only has phoenix type connectors (6ea.). If they do download to this, one of these connectors should be a comm port. All of them are wired into the machine, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are all IO signals.