odwyerpw
Supporting Member
Folks,
I have a client with an old ABB Advant / MOD300 system (v14.4). Around y2k I installed the ABB Industrial IT MOD300 OPC Server 1.1/2 (v1.01.035) . It's an OPC DA 1.0 product. This software is always installed in the PC where you install the Interface Board. In ABB MOD speak that was the RTAB (realtime excellarator board).. it emulated a Multibus1 system on a PCI board so that you could grab data over the MOD300 DCN like you belonged there .(distributed control network-- a masterless token ring type topology). Ok...so you get by now you are somewhat limited on your upgrade options for that PC and it's OS. Presently locked at WinXP.. I couldnt' even get it to run on Win7 back in the day.
I've installed some Matrikon Middle Ware (their OPC - ODBC Client).. that let's me grab data in real time from the ABB MOD system and log it to a SQL Database. Been fine forever, even as SQL keeps being upgraded... However, the train has derailed... Corporate IT for this customer will not permit anything older than Windows Server 2019 w/ SQL Server 2019. Just no way to get the OLD SQL Drivers running on WinXP to connect as we they are forced to use TLS 1.2 ... With TLS 1.0 they were golden... but the Corporate mandate to use TLS 1.2 has them sunk... And yes, I've worked for days with corporate IT to find every patch and work around (the microsoft provided solutions don't work).
This customer is migrating to Inductive Automation's Ignition, with it deployed on serveral machines... I've been apart of that process as we've moved machinary off of the ABB Advant/MOD300 platform onto a ControlLogix/Ignition combo. However, there are two machines that cannot be moved off of the MOD 300 platform for a while because of extremely specialized equipment.
However, my thought is for basic Visualization and Data Archiving, I could bring that into Ignition... provided I can communicate with the ABB MOD300 OPC Server. In fact, Ignition could even archive the data to SQL in the same fashion as the Matrikon middleware. However, sp far, I cannot get any OPC Client (Kepware, Matrikon, OPC-Expert to subscribe to and receive data from the MOD300 server located on another machine). I've tried slackening up things with DCOM on the software, but no go so far. It's not as simple as installing a tunneler at both ends either... as the customer has installed the Ignition Servers on Linux... and they are attempting to run ALLOT of machinery from a pair of redundant Ignition Servers... (So it can't be messed up)..
So, Has anyone succeeded in remotely accessing data from the ABB MOD 300 OPC Server? I'm going to work with their IT folks to see if we can identify something blocking (Port 135 is open and I'm not even trying to go across any VLANs at the moment... just another PC on the same network...
I suspect anyone with experience doing this is to be found amongst the fossils buried in Rochester NY or Columbus OH, but I thought I'd give it a shot!
I have a client with an old ABB Advant / MOD300 system (v14.4). Around y2k I installed the ABB Industrial IT MOD300 OPC Server 1.1/2 (v1.01.035) . It's an OPC DA 1.0 product. This software is always installed in the PC where you install the Interface Board. In ABB MOD speak that was the RTAB (realtime excellarator board).. it emulated a Multibus1 system on a PCI board so that you could grab data over the MOD300 DCN like you belonged there .(distributed control network-- a masterless token ring type topology). Ok...so you get by now you are somewhat limited on your upgrade options for that PC and it's OS. Presently locked at WinXP.. I couldnt' even get it to run on Win7 back in the day.
I've installed some Matrikon Middle Ware (their OPC - ODBC Client).. that let's me grab data in real time from the ABB MOD system and log it to a SQL Database. Been fine forever, even as SQL keeps being upgraded... However, the train has derailed... Corporate IT for this customer will not permit anything older than Windows Server 2019 w/ SQL Server 2019. Just no way to get the OLD SQL Drivers running on WinXP to connect as we they are forced to use TLS 1.2 ... With TLS 1.0 they were golden... but the Corporate mandate to use TLS 1.2 has them sunk... And yes, I've worked for days with corporate IT to find every patch and work around (the microsoft provided solutions don't work).
This customer is migrating to Inductive Automation's Ignition, with it deployed on serveral machines... I've been apart of that process as we've moved machinary off of the ABB Advant/MOD300 platform onto a ControlLogix/Ignition combo. However, there are two machines that cannot be moved off of the MOD 300 platform for a while because of extremely specialized equipment.
However, my thought is for basic Visualization and Data Archiving, I could bring that into Ignition... provided I can communicate with the ABB MOD300 OPC Server. In fact, Ignition could even archive the data to SQL in the same fashion as the Matrikon middleware. However, sp far, I cannot get any OPC Client (Kepware, Matrikon, OPC-Expert to subscribe to and receive data from the MOD300 server located on another machine). I've tried slackening up things with DCOM on the software, but no go so far. It's not as simple as installing a tunneler at both ends either... as the customer has installed the Ignition Servers on Linux... and they are attempting to run ALLOT of machinery from a pair of redundant Ignition Servers... (So it can't be messed up)..
So, Has anyone succeeded in remotely accessing data from the ABB MOD 300 OPC Server? I'm going to work with their IT folks to see if we can identify something blocking (Port 135 is open and I'm not even trying to go across any VLANs at the moment... just another PC on the same network...
I suspect anyone with experience doing this is to be found amongst the fossils buried in Rochester NY or Columbus OH, but I thought I'd give it a shot!
