Virtual PC for PLC programming software

[S7Guy]

Hmmm, that's odd. My USP to MPI converter worked fine with Virtual PC. It's set up as a virtual comm port on the real PC, and the Virtual PC was able to emulate that port.

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

Thanks, S7Guy

Just knowing that it can be done made me go back an look harder. I now have the USB to serial adapter working after doing some looking around. Next is the USB to MPI adapter.

My IT guy is laughing at me because I didn't use VMWare. He also rubbed it in by saying VMWare can 'understand' Virtual PC .VHDs
Oh, well.

 

[tom_stalcup]

I use Virtual PC all the time for our older Dos based programming packages. I installed PC dos 7.0, and then installed the programming packages to the virtual image. I haven't tried anything higher than Dos installed on it.


I picked it up a few years back, because Windows 2000 had so much fun running dos based programs and their communications.

If I was picking a package right now, I'd probably be using VMware, just because of the good things I've heard about it.

It also had the added benefit of letting me run my old Master's of Orion and Master's of magic games.... Without any issues at all. I imagine they might run on windows xp in emulation mode, but the option wasn't available at the time.

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

Update, IT WORKS!!!

I got VMWare installed my laptop instead of Virtual PC. ( Virtual PC is free now after I paid for it and it does work
Anyway, S7Guy was using a different third party USB-MPI adapter, not a Siemens USB-MPI adapter. The Siemens adapter would not work on Virtual PC but it does work on VMWare.

I will now be able to participate more on the S7 threads. I have a project which is to write a Profibus DP example program for our motion controller. The goal is to write a FB that will allow reading and writing block of data to and from the motion controller. This should hide the details of the handshaking and indirect addressing required to commumicate with a motion controller.

 

[tom_stalcup]

One word of warning for anyone else running programming files the way Peter is setting up....

They work great, but are severe memory hogs. You definitely want to install whatever the max amount of RAM your computer can handle....

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

Yes,

I have 1GB, I wish I had more but MEMORY IS CHEAP!!

 

[CharlesM]

Peter,

I'm guessing your writing for the RMC70? I've been working something similar with a Yamaha robot controller. I used S7-Graph for the sequence and S7-SCL to index through the array. I'm sure STL would be faster and better but it got the job done.

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

Peter,
I'm guessing your writing for the RMC70?

Yes, I have funcitonal blocks now but they take a lot of parameters. I was thinking of simplifying this so that the command takes just an any pointer to a structure define by a UDT. This means I would have to have a UDT define for each command but that would be less code than a bunch of different motion blocks like the way Rockwell did their motion blocks. UDTs don't take any space. I haven't looked to see if there is a UDT limit.

I've been working something similar with a Yamaha robot controller. I used S7-Graph for the sequence and S7-SCL to index through the array. I'm sure STL would be faster and better but it got the job done.

Yes, I know. How did it work out?
What where the main problems with the interface? I would like to know so I can avoid these mistakes. I have found that people have a very hard time writing commands or data the take several scans to complete because:
1 they are not familiar with state machines.
2 they are not experience at doing indexed addressing on a S7.

 

[CharlesM]

The #1 problem was learning how the Yamaha controller works. Took me a couple of day's to get the commands to work. The Siemens side went well after I got Graph and SCL. I have done a lot of Delphi programming so SCL came easy. I wish I could get it to loop through a little faster but Yamaha uses 6 double words for each point. They support up to 10000 points but I only used 50. Overall it works good.

 

[marius]

Virtual PC, VWare, DOSBox... cool things... unfortunately there is no way how to emulate serial communication for my old systems

 

[tom_stalcup]

Virtual PC, VWare, DOSBox... cool things... unfortunately there is no way how to emulate serial communication for my old systems

Ummm... What kind of serial emulation are you talking about? I've got it running for the older BDS5 software, the DTAM micro, the Indramat SOT panels, and the DL40's..... Works fine for those applications. I'm curious which applications it WON'T work for.....

 

[PhilipW]

The purpose is to keep my laptop free from the RLinxs and Siemen bloat that installs services, uses memory and otherwise degrades the performance of my PC when I am not programming PLCs.

Gee Peter, you always have the option of NOT running RSLinx as a service. Try going to the RSLinx Launch Control Panel and unticking "Always run as a Service". No resource use until YOU decide to turn it on manually.

 

[marius]

Ummm... What kind of serial emulation are you talking about? I've got it running for the older BDS5 software, the DTAM micro, the Indramat SOT panels, and the DL40's..... Works fine for those applications. I'm curious which applications it WON'T work for.....

...exactly, the one i really have no substitute for is called 'XPRO' which i was unable to run under anything else then old MS-DOS 6.22 or 7.0 + PC with hardware serial port (it's from local PLC manufacturer)... they also offer new cool enviroment with structure/lad/stl and all those amazing 'new techs'... but...

...we have plenty really old customers to service... and you all know the pain with notebooks... in old system, all OP's those coded manually ! The code itself is very similar... and can be imported... but thanx to the OP... it's everywhere interlaced with OP code and it is easier to write it whole again from scratch...

 

[rsdoran]

["Sweet Home Alabama" plays in background]
Garland Greene: Define irony: a bunch of idiots dancing around on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.

From the movie Con Air.

There is alot of irony here too. Y'all install programs, that use memory, to run other programs that you think run too much memory.

Most of these programs, if not more, I have installed on an IBM 390 300MHZ with 64meg ram, no problems. Why is it that you have issues with the latest and greatest?

 

[Peter Nachtwey]

Gee Peter, you always have the option of NOT running RSLinx as a service. Try going to the RSLinx Launch Control Panel and unticking "Always run as a Service". No resource use until YOU decide to turn it on manually.

I know, I have RSLinx start when I load RS500 or RS5000. It is really the Step7 stuff that is a problem.