AB Ultra 3000i not communicating w/PC

[Zztpokcch]

I have two AB ultra 3000i servos (2098-DSD-020X/C) with a 3-wire null modem to the PC using Ultraware Version 1.80.0.0
in Tools->Recover Communications it claims it found it, shows it as 38400,n,8,1, and while the recover window is there the drive shows on the tree. Once I click finish, it's gone. Rescan won't find it. I set the PC serial settings to match drive, there in the recover window.

Both drives do this.

I checked that I have Rx/Tx in the right order, and the only pinout I could find showed RS232 Rx,Tx,Gnd, and the other pins on cn3 either for 485 or N.C.

Is there some setting or incompatibility I'm missing or something?

Any ideas appreciated here.

 

[strantor]

Did you ever figure this out? I'm having the same exact issue with 2098-DSD-010X.

Rescan does not find the drive.

 

[strantor]

I have been pulling my hair out with this for 48 hours minus a 4hr nap. I have multiple of these drives in several unrelated machines; one in a CNC machine, one in a conveyor turning device, and several among a handful of palletizers. I couldn't connect to any of them. I tried several USB serial converters, several cables, several VMs, and I tried three different physical machines with hardware serial ports including an old Windows XP dinosaur desktop. I tried Ultraware 1.80, 1.82, and 1.83. Same symptom each and every time, regardless of computer, drive, software version, Windows version, cable, everything. The drive shows up during communication recovery but not during rescan.

I still don't know what the problem actually is, but I did find a solution: change the baud rate. During communication recovery, change this to 9600, then it will work. On Windows 10,7,XP, etc, all of them.

I don't know why this works. It's like the drives don't support their own default baud rate of 38.4k. I am also puzzled as to why the annals of the internet aren't littered with people asking about this and being referred to stickies about it because it's a common problem. Is it (was it) never a common problem? How are me the other guy apparently the only ones to have ever experienced this?

 

[Steve Bailey]

I just looked up the communications settings I used between a Red Lion HMI and an Ultra3000. It was 38400, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit. I no longer have the computer I used for the project which had Ultraware, but I doubt if I used a different baud rate for Ultraware than I used or the HMI.

 

[strantor]

I just looked up the communications settings I used between a Red Lion HMI and an Ultra3000. It was 38400, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit. I no longer have the computer I used for the project which had Ultraware, but I doubt if I used a different baud rate for Ultraware than I used or the HMI.

Somehow I'm not surprised the 38400 worked for you, as it seems to work for everyone else. There has to be something wrong with what I was doing, but I'm not sure what it was. I know that lower baud rates are more tolerant of noise and poor quality cables; maybe all the cables I tried were not up to the task. They were all different brands and different lengths but maybe each one was **** in its own way. **** enough to work at 9600 but not 38400. But these are cables I use for other machines all the time... maybe the Ultra3000 just isn't as fault tolerant as other devices so I never realized I was using **** cables.

I'm going to make a barely educated guess that the drives boot up into a mode with some very low fixed baud rate looking for a connected PC and when they don't find one after a couple of seconds, they switch to their programmed baud rate (38400 default) and that's why communication recovery works but rescan doesn't.