Rockwell PLC5-80C

[JohnCalderwood]

One for the more mature contributors on here.

We have a Rockwell PLC5/80C with a 1785-ENET Ethernet sidecar, and recently have been getting an intermittent fault, with the PLC going into fault, as the "coprocessor reported fault". PLC has major error code S:12=95.
A wise electrician managed to realise that the ethernet sidecar was showing a fault, with the red LED flashing a sequence of numbers. 10 flashes, followed by 6 then 5, so the error code is 65.
The manual shows error code 65 as "Dual Port System Call Failed", whatever that means...

I raised a ticket with Rockwell, and they gave me a knowledgebase article which told me the same as above, with no other explanation. Subsequent email through our account manager got a response from an experienced tech guy, who admits that it has been 30 years since he dealt with these, so struggling to help.

Anybody out there with experience of these?

I have to add that we do have a spare PLC and sidecar, which are now loaded with the required program and controlnet config. We have tried it once, but the PLC did not manage to run correctly. We think it was a controlnet issue, but production are reluctant to let us try again. We do need the controlnet network connected to see what issues we actually have.

When it faults, the PLC takes a reset, from Prog to Run, but the ethernet card needs a power cycle to reset it.

 

[joseph_e2]

I haven't seen these before, but I'd probably try replacing just the sidecar module. The user manual has a little more verbiage on that fault but not much. For S:12=95, it says "Sidecar module reported fault, which may be the result of a bad sidecar program or of a hardware failure".
That points to an issue within the sidecar itself.

 

[JohnCalderwood]

Thanks joseph, just mulling over our options.

I would not be averse to just changing the sidecar, as it eliminates the need to reload both the PLC program and the ControlNet network config.

But we need to have a group decision, and the changeout the PLC and sidecar is the first one, as we swap, if it does not work, put the old one back in.

 

[Contr_Conn]

Just a guess, I did not use these in more than decade:
I think that dual port refer to the dual port RAM memory used by processor. In this specific case it may be sidecar trying to write to the Processor memory, so you maybe facing processor memory issues. Again, pure guess…