After 4 years, I am working on a new project with an Automation Direct controller. Wow, I forgot much of a pain they are to program. So...
The Top 10 reasons why I Hate Programming Automation Direct controllers...
1. Too many numbering systems... did I stick a BCD, Binary, or Real number in that register?
2. Comparison contacts only work with BCD values.
3. Loading and storing the accumulator all the time. Seems like half my program is LD and OUT instructions.
4. Octal addressing.
5. Registers used in IBOX instructions don't always show up in the cross reference.
6. Doing math functions with BCD or Binary numbers is tedious. Especially when dealing with positive and negative values.
7. Difficult to navigate through all the rungs of logic. Would be nice if I could separate all my subroutines and jump between them from an explorer pane with just a mouse click.
8. The $ we saved in hardware is spent in software development time.
9. Dead hardware out of the box. Me to tech support, "What da ya mean my t/c module configuration is wrong, I copied it right out of the manual?"
10. OK, so that's only 9 reasons, but I'm sure I forgot one somewhere along the line.
The Top 10 reasons why I Hate Programming Automation Direct controllers...
1. Too many numbering systems... did I stick a BCD, Binary, or Real number in that register?
2. Comparison contacts only work with BCD values.
3. Loading and storing the accumulator all the time. Seems like half my program is LD and OUT instructions.
4. Octal addressing.
5. Registers used in IBOX instructions don't always show up in the cross reference.
6. Doing math functions with BCD or Binary numbers is tedious. Especially when dealing with positive and negative values.
7. Difficult to navigate through all the rungs of logic. Would be nice if I could separate all my subroutines and jump between them from an explorer pane with just a mouse click.
8. The $ we saved in hardware is spent in software development time.
9. Dead hardware out of the box. Me to tech support, "What da ya mean my t/c module configuration is wrong, I copied it right out of the manual?"
10. OK, so that's only 9 reasons, but I'm sure I forgot one somewhere along the line.