How do you talk to your legacy equipment???

esp400

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May 2015
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Milwaukee
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Our dept has an old 32bit Dell Latitude D810 which has seen better days. I'm sure a lot of companies have the same setup in which there is legacy equipment that has not been upgraded and as such, you use the old 32bit laptop running Windows XP to do the work.

So has anyone explored connecting to 32bit software platforms such as early Rockwell Factory Talk or a communication network like DH+ where you'd use a PCMIA card slot with 64bit computers running a 32bit Virtual Machine? What is typical here?

Honestly, I have no experience with VM's. We had a machine manufacturer's programmer in house not long ago and he casually mentioned using VM's to run different software platforms so that he could connect to all the different equipment. We had an interesting conversation where he explained that if you use the wrong VM to connect to an PV+, the font does weird stuff like gets smaller or larger (which happened to us).

How does everyone accomplish connecting to the 32bit stuff? Is there a more modern way of accomplishing this?

Thx for your input!
 
I reckon you need to get that accursed PCMCIA DH+ card and cleanse it with fire. I know it cost more than a **** car but its a bloody miracle to get them working even on the original hardware. You can get a usb version now that will work well on anything including virtual hardware.

Try and run the vmware standalone converter on the old box. It will build a VM of the machine that you can test out without busting the original.

I run a lot of old XP VMs for older software. They are great because they are so fast on modern hardware and you can run a bunch of them at the same time because they are so small.

If you are going to virtualise then I recommend getting a sold state disk first. Actually I recommend that under all conditions :)
 
If you post specifics, we can coach you through specifics.


The quick-and-dirty way, and my preferred method, is to take the original PC and use clonezilla to make a virtual drive. For older hardware, you can use PLOP boot cd as well.


If you just want to test it out, give Virtualbox a shot. It does a pretty good job, though I just prefer VMWare Pro Workstation.


Now, you configure a virtual machine in the software, create a new disk, and boot into clonezilla. Restore your backup to your virtual disk. Boom, now you have a virtual copy of that machine you can run on 64 bit machines.


Next, you would want to get a PCMCIA adapter, or just any other old DH+ interface. I think AB makes one that is USB. (or, they have them at PLCCable.com) You use what is called, "Passthrough" mode on the virtual machine, where your host OS passes that particular device through to the guest OS. Then, you install drivers and use the device as you normally would.


That is my basic strategy to preserve legacy systems, and honestly, it works just find with today's hardware. The main issue is the windows 10 forced updates. Even on LTSB you get forced updates. I've actually switched back to linux because of this issue. Nothing like going to a machine, opening your laptop and waiting on an update. I won't deal with it anymore.
 
If you have a modern PLC with an Ethernet as well as DH+ Card, and you add the legacy PLCs using RSLinx and still end up communicating with them.

Just expand the tree until you can see it, and you'll be able to upload/download do anything, by using your Ethernet card as a translator for DH+.
 
The specifics, given my limited knowledge of VM’s, is only that I want to only use one 64 bit computer for everything. Can it run a 32bit version of XP to install legacy software on to communicate with all of the older equipment? I know that Dell will sell a modern 64bit computer with a PCMIA port but is it worth it to go this route or should we keep buying old 32 bit computers off eBay for connecting?
 
Get you a good USB adapter instead and use a 32 bit windows XP VM. Just youtube how to set up a virtual machine. Youtube knows all.
 
It means "read the freaking manual". That was a joke, though. VMs have very difficult and cryptic manuals. The process is nothing to be intimidated about, though.
 
I'm with you. This comes out of my mouth a lot. However, I take issue quite a bit with people who write manuals. Mostly hardware/software stuff. It would seem that the engineer who designs/builds/uses the product and the engineer who writes the manual are on opposite sides of the building and never talk. Like EVER!
 
My IT guy has installed the VM on his personal machine to test out connectivity of RSLogix 500 in an XP environment running on the VM. The controls engineer and I were talking about rehosting one of our current licenses of RSLogix500/Linx on his laptop when he got the idea to use one of the old EVMove licenses that we have lying around somewhere. However, we do not know what version of Logix/Linx to download. My thought is that we would want the highest revision of Logix500/Linx before the jump to 64bit happened as we are trying to communicate with all of our older equipment. Does anyone know what revision this would be? Any better ideas?
 
I could be wrong on this for the slc500, but we use 9.00.00 (CPR9) and this is the last, close to the last version compatible with the old style copy protection scheme.
I cannot say about the plc5. I seem to remember 7.8 ???
james
 
I could be wrong on this for the slc500, but we use 9.00.00 (CPR9) and this is the last, close to the last version compatible with the old style copy protection scheme.
james

So I'm assuming here that post version 9.00.00 is where Factory Talk came out and 64 bit takes over then?

Is there a grand release history of what came came out with dates somewhere? Release note archive? Not sure what you would call it but....
 

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