Little Star PLC

[joker438]

I am working on backing up some Little Star PLC's for a customer. I am able to download to them but can't upload. Has anyone had any dealings with these and can point me in the right direction?????

 

[OkiePC]

Welcome to the forum!

Just when I think I have read about all the oddball brand out there...Google is no help for this one, so can you give us more information? Maybe a picture?

 

[joker438]

Pic of Little Star PLC

Give me a second until I figure out how to post a pic

 

[joker438]

 

[joker438]

Little Star

I have done quite a bit of searching online. Very little info on this guy. I am able to download to it but cant upload. The Easy Start programming software it comes with doesn't really have an upload button but in the manual it says something about uploading through a modem. I also done some reading on the EEprom. The EEprom is a chip on the mother board. I am wondering if this could be copied and replicated to another chip. I have never done this before but have heard it could be done. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[mendonsy]

Sounds like a great candidate for the dumpster!!

 

[joker438]

Little Star

It will be. A customer of mine just purchased a sub sea well making 1200 bbls/day. This is doing some watchdog timers for A and B. Plus one running all the controls on the HPU and another one running all the controls on the Chemical Injection. We have no backup programs incase they **** out. With the price of oil they don't want to do an upgrade. Looks like they will have to.

 

[OkiePC]

Do you feel lucky?

ftp1.digi.com/support/documentation/0190015_f.pdf

It looks like the same unit as in your picture. Good news is that Digi bought them. Bad news is that it's a PITA to find documents on their site for obsolete stuff.

 

[jrwb4gbm]

I have done quite a bit of searching online. Very little info on this guy. I am able to download to it but cant upload. The Easy Start programming software it comes with doesn't really have an upload button but in the manual it says something about uploading through a modem. I also done some reading on the EEprom. The EEprom is a chip on the mother board. I am wondering if this could be copied and replicated to another chip. I have never done this before but have heard it could be done. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not familiar with this unit at all but will try to answer what I can in a general way.
The 1st thing you need to do is get the Mfr. and part number off the EEPROM. A quick google and ebay search turned up many EEPROM programmers available. If the chip is removable and blank chips and a programmer can be obtained, burning backup copies should be easy. Most of them come with simple software for copying chips.

Most programs written in "C" type language are converted to (Assembly) machine language at compile time. I am not surprised that you can't upload from the plc since the program is running on (Assembly) machine language. The program (Assembly) code should be run thru a De-compiler program to even edit it.
From what little I read in the manual just "Data" created for or by the PLC could be Up or Downloaded thru a modem.

 

[joker438]

Little Star

The EEProm is removable. I will look into something to copy them so we can have a backup. The info online is very limited. I had called DiGi and they were not certain you could upload from the unit. Thanks for yall help.