Allen Bradley 1784-PCMK USB Adapter

[B_Leonhardt]

Hello!

We use a lot of different PLC brands (e.g. Allen Bradley, Siemens, Mitsubishi, Keyence) in our products. For that reason, we decided to setup virtual machines under VMware to avoid conflicting drivers.
The problem is now that VMware (Host System and Guest System is Win XP) obviously does not support PCMCIA which we would need to connect to the A&B PLCs via our 1784-PCMK/A and -B Cards.
I already know that there's a USB to DH+ cable available from Rockwell but we can't afford buying new cables for 6 Notebooks at the moment.
Has anybody found a working solution with a USB to PCMCIA Adapter? I found some older posts regarding similar questions but none really answers it.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Ken Roach]

I do not know of any USB/PCMCIA adapter that will work properly with 1784-PCMK/PCC/PCD cards.

Users have reported about 50% success with the Duel Systems adapter and ordinary Windows XP, but none of those users were also trying to connect to a virtual machine.

One workaround for VM's is to run RSLinx Gateway on the host operating system, and connect from the VM's to RSLinx Gateway over TCP/IP. That software is not inexpensive, but it will do what you describe and if you are a toolkit owner you already have it.

 

[B_Leonhardt]

Thank you Ken.
I asked my colleagues in the U.S. and they are going to look if we already have a license for RSLinx Gateway but as they never heard of it I think we don't.
Do you know if there's another workaround possibility?