Alstom Alspa and GE

I received a email from a customer looking to support their Alstom Alspa PLC's I think GE bought them, my customer is wondering....

my customer said:

We own a quite old PLC : Alstom Alspa C80-35

We are using it with a software named Automgen and GE Fanuc postprocessor.

PLC is connected using a SNP/RS232 adapter and around 3 meters of serial
cable.

We are facing some (random) connection issues

I wonder if

https://www.plccable.com/ge-fanuc-usb-snp-plc-cable-ic690usb901-90-30-90-70/

is compatible with our PLC and our software stack.

Click to expand...

Guessing I would say yes but since they are on the other side of the big pond... I would like to be confident before they pay the shipping cost

Anyone have any experience with them?

I'm going to further complicate your customers issue. GE sold its automation arm to Emerson this year (not sure if the sale closed yet or not), including its PLC line. Alstom Alspa and Blueline are now three resells deep.

For Blueline i use a third party vendor, Hughes Technical Services. Might be a place to start for Alspa support.

https://hts-llc.com/

Thank you, I sent this to my customer, they may want to look at upgrading.

One of Jeff Immelt's last acquisitions before he retired as GE President was the Alstom deal. The sale of GE's PLC business to Emerson is now completed.

I was an applications specialist for a GE Fanuc distributor from 1990 - 2000. If I remember correctly, the Alstom Alspa line used Series 90-30 and 90-70 components. What I don't know is whether or not the firmware in the Alstom CPU modules was the same as what was used in the GE Fanuc CPUs. So, there is high probability of a physical match. Since the customer is already running Alstom software, firmware compatibility between what he has and the 90 Series should not be a problem. I just don't know what the options are for upgrading to more modern hardware.

My communications issues with old stuff like this has always been about trying to get a reliable USB/serial connection when running old DOS-based software on a current computer. Unless the customer's "random connection issues" are due to a bad pin connection in their existing cable, I'm not optimistic that a new cable will cure them.

Thanks for the comments Steve, im sure the info will help them decide one way or the other.

we are company working in Egypt country in printing and packing field we have siemens S5-135U connected with AEG PROCESSING field . unfortunately battery was down and program lost from the Eprom .after we loading the program to the plc s5 some prompters was missing