SLC 5/05 lost Ethernet communications

[jshiepe]

Hi folks,

Had a strange one happen last night and I can't seem to figure out exactly what the cause was. A SLC 5/05 just seemed to stop communicating from the Channel 1 port(ethernet). The CPU was not faulted and the ENET light on the CPU was solid green, but neither the I/O server I'm using(Wonderware's DASABCIP, which has been very reliable) nor RSLinx from my programming node could see it. It was almost like a cable had been unplugged, but all were checked and were plugged in solid.

It gets a little stranger.....

I had the techs cycle power while I watched RSWho in Linx from my programming terminal and waited to see the CPU come back online. The techs told me it was powered up and I should be able to see it, but I couldn't see it in RSWho.........BUT I could ping it! I was also able to reconnect the DASABCIP server, and everything seemed to return to normal, except for this issue with RSWho. The only way I could see it again was by shutting down and restarting RSLinx(Classic version, 2.5).

I guess I have two questions:

1. What caused the original problem of comms on channel 1 to just stop without any type of CPU fault?
2. Why did I have to cycle RSLinx to see the CPU again? I've never had to do that before....

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[drewcrew6]

what is the firmware of the 5/05? There is a known problem with a certain firmware losing comms from the ethernet port. I believe it is frn 9.? with daughter board rev of 3.33 . I'm not 100% sure of those numbers though. We have about 10 of these proceccors,some of them we "flashed" the firmware to the next level, we have not done all because of some issues doing the flash process.

We have lost a great deal of man hours to this and currently have 1 processor that is currently a door-stop, Rockwell has given us some things to try on it but the entire project got turned over to dayshift (because of support)and they haven't gotten back to it.

My advice is if you have that known issue then either get a new 5/05 on hand just in case or know that downtime will happen.

Some that we did took maybe 20 minutes including setup of laptop, booting up , etc. Others were fought with for close to 8 hours.


As far as linx I currently have 2.42 some on dayshift have 2.5 and they seem to have some odd issues with it.

Drewcrew6

 

[Oakley]

There is a Knowledgebase article released recently for RSLinx 2.5. I don't know if this has anything to do with your issue or not, but worth a look.

 

[jshiepe]

Drew,

Thanks for info. I will do some research on the firmware issue and see if my processor qualifies. I have spares on the shelf, which will get us up in the short term should it happen again, but I certainly don't need any additional doorstops.

Oakley, thanks also for the input. I'll have a look at the knowledge base for that article.

Jeff

 

[jshiepe]

Here's the specs on my processor:

Operating system: OS501 Series C FRN 6
Hardware: L551 Series B FRN 4
Ethernet Daughterboard: Series 2 FRN 50

My browsing of the Rockwell KB so far indicates that I am at or above the recommended firmware, series, etc., unless I'm missing something.

I did notice that there are a lot of useful statistics available via the processor's web page, but since I'm not a network expert, I'm not really sure what I'm looking at.

The only other piece of information I can share that may provide some insight is that this processor is messaging to 3 other nodes(1 NET-ENI(Read), 1 SLC 5/05(READ), and 1 DVT camera(WRITE)) and has the connection to the DASABCIP server. From the Application Memory Statistics page, the Connection Tokens Total is 6, with 3 IN and 3 OUT if that helps any.

Thanks for any other info.

Jeff

 

[Oakley]

Further info I heard yesterday - I don't know the validity of this but here it goes ...


If the network is interrupted to a Ethernet device, RSLinx may not be able to reconnect without being restarted.


We don't use RSLinx as a service outside of our programming terminals, so I can't test this for accuracy, but that is what I heard.

 

[jshiepe]

Thanks Oakley. What you describe is what I experienced the other night, so in my mind, there is some validity to it. As far as a disturbance in the network, I can't say that we had one, as there are other devices connected to the same ethernet switch as the 5/05 in question, one of which is another 5/05, and none of them exhibited the same behavior. I'm hoping this was an isolated incident, but I hate not knowing for sure what could have caused it.


Thanks,
Jeff