Symax 600 I/O Addressing

[JohnM]

Hello and thanks in advance for any assistance

I am working on a project to convert several Symax 600 PLC's to AB, All I have are teh current programs and cannot figure out the I/O addressing scheme of the symax PLC's. Which bits are real I/O and what is internal? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

John

 

[Jim Dungar]

The Sy/max family used free format addressing. There are no fixed addresses anything such as I/O, internal coils, timer/counter, memory addresses. The only dedicated addresses are the system words which begin with 8001.

I/O and other coils are addressed as the bits (1 to 16, right to left )of any word. Each address also has status bits (17 to 32)

You need to look at the rack addressing of the processor to see which addresses were assigned to real world digital and analog I/O. Addresses were assigned to I/O cards based on the number of words needed by each card. Actual card data is not part of the "program" because the Sy/Max processor did not care what card was or wasn't present (it was up to the programmer to create any error checking using status bits).

For example:
A 16 point digital card would have 1 address: 0001 for I/O 1-1 to 1-16
A 64 point digital card would have 4 addresses: 0002 to 0005 for I/O 2-1 to 2-16, 3-1 to 3-16, 4-1 to 4-16, and 5-1 to 5-16
A 8 channel analog card would have 8 addresses: 6, 7, 8, and 9
A remote I/O communication card might have 512 addresses: 10 to 513

Many of the old Sy/Max manuals can be found at www.squared.com.

 

[JohnM]

Thanks

I had been reading the Symax Manuals, but was still a little confused. Guess that's what I get for being used to AB and GE style addressing. Your Post clarified things for me.

Regards,

John M

 

[Jim Dungar]

Just remember, the Sy/Max family was introduced around 1980 and they insisted on 100% backward compatibility for the rest of time.