S7-400 and wincc 6.2 communication

[Mrneverwhere]

Hello, iam a newbie in wincc operations.
But I am a hard/soft engineer.

In my father'r company, they have used a wincc based project to monitor the production process.

The PC with wincc project recently died. So we managed to save the project from the hard drive but nothing else.

On the new PC, we have a fresh install of windows xp, wincc 6.2 sp2 and all the PC drivers.

I have set the network adapter ip address in the same range as plc's
10.0.0.1....0.0.7 since we have 7 plc's

When I open the project, and activate runtime...I can no longer see plc-s


Do I have to set opc server and so and so or I can talk directly with plc-s...what am I missing.

Thanx for help in advance

 

[JesperMP]

Disclaimer, I only have a superficial knowledge about WinCC V6.

Here is the manual for configuring communications with WinCC V6:
https://cache.industry.siemens.com/dl/files/307/21320307/att_829876/v1/CommunicationManual_e.pdf

Does WinCC use Profibus, MPI or Ethernet to communicate with the PLCs ?

If Profibus or MPI, there is probably a special card in the original PC.
You need this card in the new PC.
And WinCC probably uses Profibus S7 protocol with the S7-400 PLCs, not FDL, FMS or DP which are other Profibus variants.

If Ethernet, then WinCC can use a special Siemens card or a generic Ethernet card.

WinCC can use OPC, but it is more likely that the project is setup with native drivers.
When installing WinCC on the PC, the necessary Profibus or Ethernet drivers are usually installed also.

To figure out exactly what is going on, you need to open the WinCC Project and investigate the connection setup.
You probably need someone that is experienced with S7-400 and WinCC to help you.

 

[tdoa]

You need to go to the control panel and open the Set PG/PC setting and select the correct ethernet (or other interface) so it can communicate with the PLC.

 

[Mrneverwhere]

Thanx for answering, the communication chain looks like this:
Machine room :S7400----cp443-1---ethernet switch with optical fiber
Server room : optical fiber switch with all PLC come together.
Direct Ethernet cable from that switch to PC
I can't find the server settings in the wincc explorer. In the tag Management I can find only PLC IP info...when I ping them, they answer...I have put the subnet mask 255.0.0.0 in the card settings..., but when I change the mask to 255.255.255.0, I still get the answer when pinging...

 

[Mrneverwhere]

I forgot to mention, when I first time loaded the project I had a question from wincc, asking something like :
Cannot find the server configured id the project, would you like to start local PC as the server.i said yes...and then nothing, I tried all the settings from the PG/PC option list...but non of them worked...turned off all the firewall and antivirus settings...still nothing

 

[JesperMP]

Cannot find the server configured id the project, would you like to start local PC as the server

Not sure, but the 'local PC' could point to that the connection uses SIMATIC NET and not a direct driver.

Post screenshots from the configuration setup in the WinCC project.