Starter 4.2.0.0 Amd Micro Master

[504bloke]

Does any actually use Starter and think its any good ?!

It takes 4 hours to install on a normal laptop, takes 10 minutes to start up, wont run under VMWare for comms reasons

And i catn get it to talk to a brand new out of the box drive on serial or usb-serial !

Checked every setting and spoke with siemens tech support also

A whole day wasted for a 30 minute on site job !

 

[Manglemender]

Dave,

I have used Starter but I now use Scout (Motion Control package which includes Starter). I do run it in VMware without any problems.

Would I say that it's good? Not sure if I'd use the word good... I think that "Better" might be more appropriate; it's certainly better than drive monitor in many ways.

There are people in this office that curse and swear about it but then they're Littlehampton type people and more used to better user interfaces.

Nick

 

[PLC]

I use DriveES, this loads Starter, Drive Monitor,
SimoCom U and A.
Yes it takes awhile to load but it all works fine.
I program drives (most of the time) through profibus and ethernet. My laptop has a serial port, so the software works great.

Remember the good ol' days of DOS and a couple of disks

 

[504bloke]

LA, Must be SSD, had it been SSD drive id have been done in 5 minutes

Spoke with Siemens Tech UK and Starter 4.x wont run under VMWare, the comms dont work on it (i did try it in vmware and sure enough the comms dont work :-( )

Installed Starter 4.2 on IBM think pad with real serial

Cant get online to drive or see drive in diagnostics, installed USB-Serial (change all parameters) (Siemens approved ATEN convertor) and rebooted, power cycled drive, tried to connect to the drive, NO LUCK again

Drive parameters set for 9600 comms and extended menus

Arghhhhhhh

 

[Manglemender]

I'm sure that you've probably been through this with Tech Sup but just in case:

1) set PG/PC interface: Access Point "Drives", Interface PC COM-Port (USS).

2) Set the access point in Starter - Options - Settings.

I only have V4.1 of starter and no drive to test it on but the options should be similar.

Nick

 

[Jeff23spl]

i prefer to still use drive monitor and sometimes it's faster to use the keypad of the vfd as much of the time we just want to module the speed of a standard application...Most of the time, we never use more than 10% of the MM4 features.
I won't work with a laptop that doesn't have a real hardwire DB9 serial port and never experienced any problems communicating with a VFD that never receibe an Advvance Operator Panel (AOP) BEcause this interface auto change the communication parameter of the VFD and you need to change them back with the BOP (Basic panel)