Help identifying an Antique

Attached is a picture of a PLC from the mid to late 80's... It is currently running a machine that is struggling after a power disruption. Can anyone out there identify the unit? I've heard Siemens, but would like conformation. Also, anyone out there know where spare card might be found?

Maybe a Siemens S3?

that thing looks ancient. good luck finding parts! ebay or radwell is probably your only chance.

Not sure with the hexadecimal addressing. Hasn't Siemens always been in bytes?

At first I thought early TI, but I don't think so. They always used 1-16 addressing.
Not AB.

So... no help from me.

This looks very similar

http://www.sattcontrol.se/sida/sida3_1_1.php?select=meny3_1

Doug-P said:

http://www.sattcontrol.se/sida/sida3_1_1.php?select=meny3_1

Click to expand...

Octal though.

The cards look like VME cards.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMEbus

Best I can suggest is see if you can power the machine down sometime, pull the CPU and see if there's a nameplate on the inside.




Hopefully has the name, model & serial number, maybe even firmware revision

i don't know what it is...but my first thought was early japanese PLC ?

be careful before powering down.

try to see if there is any back up media onsite (probably cassette tape or 5 1/4" floppy from that era i'm guessing, even if you do find this its unlikely you can recover unless the interfaces are also there)

possible problems to be aware of

1. if its always powered then the backup battery for program may be low and you could possibly lose the program
2. older equipment power supplies can fail once powered down and then powered up, the inrush current can sometimes cause them to fail ( i have had this many times over my 40+ years) mainly with older VSD's and Switchmode power supplies
3. the same as above for CPU and I/O cards

EICS said:

i don't know what it is...but my first thought was early japanese PLC ?

Click to expand...

Thinking something similar. Maybe KOYO?

Quote: "The cards look like VME cards". Just about every PLC manufacturer made a VME version of their PLC's.
What kind of equipment are these PLC(s) controlling? Any documentation?
They could also be custom one off's.

I would concentrate on locating documentation with a view to the replacement of the entire PLC. I would not waste any time on trying to locate spares to try and keep this relic up and running.

Back in those days you would always print out the program to paper. If you can find this then you have something to support the creation of the new PLC program. Just be warned that the PLC looks so old, that a program listing probably does not have any symbolic addressing or like that.
I think that you are possibly looking at writing a completely new program from scratch with very little information carrying over from the old PLC. This may not be so difficult unless there is some special know-how hidden in the old code.
I have done a few migration projects in my time, and I have never migrated the code, I have always written new code from scratch using all the functionality and power of modern PLCs. The only reason I have had to look into the old code was for understanding some functionality that otherwise would not be obvious.

Looks like an old SaFire controller we used in the steel foundry.

Thanks, the program is actually written in assembly code and burned to an E-prom. This thing interfaces with 5 DC drives and a pile if small motor starters and switches. I'll have time this coming Monday to have a better look at some of the spare cards to see if there is more clues to what it might be.

That looks like a fun project .