Flash Bios

A guy at work was flashing a compact logix firmware at it didnt finish and now is a "brick". I dont get any fault lights but it cant communicate via ethernet so I wanted to try and use a compact flash card to flash the bios. How do I do it? Do I need to use a working PLC to load the firmware onto the card and then just plug the card into the "brick"?

DF1 cable? through the serial port.

We only have one labtop with no serial ports. Everything is ethernet.

They make one to usb. I guess you don't have one. I have had a lot of success with the serial to usb converters also. You might be stuck until you can get this cable.

You can try the CompactFlash method.

As you suspected, you need to create a CF card image by saving a program + firmware image in an identical model of controller. Then put the CF card in the new controller and cycle power.

how do you create a firm ware image on the flash card

You need to load a simple or empty program into the controller using RSLogix 5000, then save the program to CompactFlash, aka "Nonvolatile Storage".

This is done using the buttons on the Nonvolatile Storage tab of the Controller Properties window.

The image file that is created includes the controller's runtime firmware as well as the user program.

When you load that CF card into a controller that only has its boot firmware, it will attempt to load the runtime firmware.

I can't guarantee this will work; I've never had to try it.