B&R Power Panel 41

I have a B&R power panel and would like to know how to grab a backup of the unit, it does not have a pcima card reader, so all the data is on board. I have installed B&R automaton studio but not too sure of the process. Using a Rs 232 port to talk to the unit. I'm going to have to send it in for repair as it does not advance from the first splash page with the firmware. Any help would be great than you :nodi:

http://www.plctalk.net/qanda/showthread.php?t=55486

The above thread may help you out.
Regards,

Power Panels have a CF card that holds the program, so if your unit does not have a CF card in it, it doesn't have a program in it and will only boot to the hardware/firmware screen. Some can run in terminal mode without a CF card and upload a visualization from another B&R PLC over ethernet; these are typically PP120s or mobile panel 180s.

The way you make a backup of the program is to take out the CF card and use Runtime Utility Center (included with Automation Studio, also available separately from B&R as a free download). There is an option to make a image of a CF card, as well as an option to burn a new CF card with an image you've already taken.

If your unit does not have a CF card slot, then it probably isn't a power panel (I am unaware of any power panel part numbers that have no CF card). Since you're talking about RS232 and PCIMA, I'm guessing you have something older, like a Provit display (all power panels should have an ethernet port standard, so RS232 would be a strange way to program it).

EDIT: I should point out that B&R does not store the source code on a PLC by default, so if you're talking about uploading the program to store a copy of the program logic, that's probably not going to happen. If the source code was stored on there, it was either manually placed in the F: partition of the CF card (you can download it with an FTP client when connected to the PLC) or stored as a .br file that can be loaded with Automation Studio when connected to the PLC (just use File -> Open -> Load from target).

I just looked and sure enough, PP41 (4P3040.01-490) uses PCMCIA, had internal 1.4MB Flash PROM, and didn't come standard with an ethernet port. There is no chance the source code is stored on this thing, but you should be able to upload the binary data and load it into another unit if you need to swap them out using Runtime Utility Center over serial.

This time you'll need to use the option for editing/executing PIL files and build a command list that will connect to the unit and upload everything on it. All the needed commands can be found under the command window, from making the serial connection, to getting a module list in "PLC Information", to uploading all the modules in that list to your computer.

EDIT: I've never seen one of these as they're old enough I never used one on a new project and new enough their aren't many being retrofitted out.