Help identifying an Antique

I've seen something resembling that on an 80's german manufactured machine. This "PLC" was controlling a drum with a knife that cut sheets of paper in a paper mill. I belive it was basically a rack slot computer made up by different modules so you couldnt program it like a PLC, i think i must have been programmed in either C or assembly.

Spot on ojz0r, it is controlling a paper sheeting machine from the late '80's. And yes, its all in assembly language. The DC Drive controller cards are pretty specialized I think. In addition to this mystery controller, there is also an Allen-Bradley PLC 2, both interfaced to a DOS PC as an operator interface. A dinosaur times three!

Facinating. Is it a Jagenberg machine? I think the control unit was done by a company called micromatic/mikromatic* or something similar. I tried to find if i had any photos of the control unit but it seems i never photographed it sadly. I havent worked there since the beginning of 2012.

That machine was upgraded to Siemens S7 in the early 2000's. They were communicating in ASCII over serial, cant remember if it was rs-232 (most likely) or rs-485.

The DC drives was BBC but had some markings of ASEA/ABB so it was probably around the time of the merger.

Great info! The shelter is actually a Pasaban, from a company in Spain. I'll be doing some deeper research next week and let you know what I find...

EICS said:

i don't know what it is...but my first thought was early japanese PLC ?

e careful before powering down.

try to see if there is any back up media onsite (probably cassette tape or 5 1/4" floppy from that era i'm guessing, even if you do find this its unlikely you can recover unless the interfaces are also there)

possible problems to be aware of

1. if its always powered then the backup battery for program may be low and you could possibly lose the program
2. older equipment power supplies can fail once powered down and then powered up, the inrush current can sometimes cause them to fail ( i have had this manyb times over my 40+ years) mainly with older VSD's and Switchmode power supplies
3. the same as above for CPU and I/O cards

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Good guess. The 'X' and 'Y' are give away indicators.
At a minimum, the I/O cards are non-US, but, yes, it does look like a VME package.

So after further investigation, it appears these are custom cards. The manufacturer of the sheeter has their name and I presume a card number (part #) that they or the subcontractor who actually made the cards assigned. I suppose starting from scratch would be best, but it is a huge project for the small company that "owns" the thing. Unfortunately, with out understanding how the whole system works, it would be all but impossible to try to do it "piece-meal". Houston, we have a problem...

It would be good to know what processor the is being used. Most old VME bus computers used 68000s or some newer version because of the addressing.
It would make sense for someone to make their own I/O cards since so many were available back then.

paperboy4828 said:

So after further investigation, it appears these are custom cards. The manufacturer of the sheeter has their name and I presume a card number (part #) that they or the subcontractor who actually made the cards assigned...

Click to expand...

A lot of manufacturers will rebrand their product if you buy in quantity, I have seen where that quantity can be as low as 2 pieces.

Chances are it is a (sort-of) name brand controller the OEM of the machine had their name put on.