Speedtronic Mark-V Operator Interface

<p>Hi,

<p>I am an Instrument & Control Engineer in FFC, Pakistan. We are using Speedtronic Mark-V Control System on our Gas Turbine Application. For Primary Operator Interface &lt;I&gt;, we have been using old computers P1 since comissioning, as supplied by GE, USA. Now we want to upgrade these machines to P4 new computers. Before doing this I want to share the experience with someone who has already used these modern computers for &lt;I&gt;.

<p>Is there anybody who can share such experience with me?

Yes i have used a P2 instead of a 80486 processor. We were using Windows 3.11.

There are other things you have to see. What Operating system are you using? Can you transfer the existing Hard disk drive on the new system? I would suggest you prepare a new hard drive by installing all the software on it. Then test the systems. Sometimes you need activation keys. Make sure you have all of them. Do you have the required CDs or floppies to be able to install the software. There must be other cards other then the standard PC cards. Do you have the drivers for them? Can these cards fit into the P4 slots? I think better to use a P3.

I will be happy to assist you if you want. Good luck.

Burhan
<[email protected]>

<p>Hi,

<p>Unfortunately all or most PIV PCs don’t have ISA slots for the conventional Arcnet card. I would suggest that you use a good quality PIII PC (stay away from COMPACT make) and configure it as an &lt;I&gt;. Once configured, if you have communication problems ,check the ARCNET IRQ interrupt in F:\config.dat (you may need to change it from 15 to 10 etc.)

<p>I hope this helps.

Hi,

just a question, you have a mark V under IDOS or UNDER cimplicity?

Hi..

We have the same problem with Ge mark V operator interface. We will change old PC with P4 like you. I was install Mark V IDP software in IBM P4, it is work, but i still have a problem to make new PC (P4) Comunicate with Speedtronic Mark V, because P4 needs arcnet card in PCI not ISA slot. If you have PCI Arcnet card, you must run the IDP software under windows operating sistem not in Dos operating system! and you should have arcnet driver too!

[email protected]

Hi...

it is very strange. how did you run IDP softwere as it only works in dos environment and for windows operating system you have cimplicity and if you want to use IDP on windows you have to make use of virtual pc and then can run this software but even then you r using dos operation system. And about arcnet card most of the times the value of "LUN" logic unit number does not match the stage link id on the LCC card, they both have to match for proper communication.

regards
Umer farooq

Hi, I am a developing engineer of Turbine control software.

As I am a technical guy and not a salesman, I will post here the following:

To all out there having problems with the obsolet IDOS system for GE MarkV Gas or Steam turbine controllers.

There are no more problems transfering the IDOS operator interface to a state of the art industrial computer.
There is a company located in Austria and Germany which can provide a solution for this problem. They have a software solution called TMOS (Turbine Monitoring System). This system can display the old IDOS screens as well as new state of the art displays, you have rung display, trending funtions, documentation creators a.s.o.

The operators need no special training to use the system. The system can be implemented during turbine operation. The system is running on all state of the art industrial PCs. The PCI arcnet card will also be supplied by this company.

The software is also running on laptop computers, using a PCMCIA interface to the ARCNET.
The name of the company is "ITS-Industrial Turbine Services". The office E-Mail adress is [email protected]. The company is ISO 9001 certified.

Good luck.

This is good news! I have a couple of questions which arent' answered on the website:

First, it appears that IDOS is being copied from and <I> to a computer running "WinNT". Is IDOS running in a command-prompt window or as a service on the WinNT computer?

Second, is the computer running Windows NT or Windows 2000 or Windows XP?

Thanks for the information!

First:
The IDOS operationg System will not be copied to the new machine. Only the F:\ drive will be transfered. The TMOS system can read the original files, connect to the MKV, show the displays, a.s.o.

So IDOS is not running on the new machine. The TMOS system will do the job.

Second:
As I know, the first systems were running on NT. The new versions are running on W2000. I dont know if there is a version available for XP.

I cannot answer detailed questions. I have seen the system running on site, when I was there for valve calibration. It was very easy and comfortable to use. I told my boss, every field eng. should have this tool because it runs on laptops also (PCMCIA Arcnet solution). I can confirm this, because one eng. of the turbineservices company was there, and it was working on his laptop. This guy also showed me something like the software structure, and how to edit files a.s.o. Very interesting!

Maybe you can find a direct contact. I have a business card, but I can not post his adress here. I dont want him to be spamed.

Maybe I will become a member of this site, and find a nice nickname, for further discussions.

bye for now.

Try to contact woodward group, as they are have a lot of experience of GE. I have contact with their Europe staff

Hi.

We have made <I> running on PIV machine utilising 40 GB. We have used Win98 DOS to run IDP.

Regards,
Tushar

Would you please explain in more detail the procedure of installation for IDP Mark-V to PIV and communication with controllers? Thank you.

I'll make a presumption that the Pentium 4 motherboard has at least one (legacy) AT slot for the ARCnet card (since there's no driver available for IDOS to use a PCI ARCnet card).

I've tried to use MS-DOS 6.1 on a Pentium 4 PC with an AT slot and couldn't get IDOS to work. I didn't think of using Win98 as the OS and creating the necessary start-up files (it's been a long time and I've forgotten exactly how to to do this, but it can, and has, been done) to run Win98 without the GUI (Graphical User Interface). This is probably a very good idea! Win98 is just a command-line DOS with a GUI that runs "on top."

As I recall, one needs to create a .PIF (Program Information File) file to execute the necessary commands to "unload" the GUI and allow IDOS to take control of the interrupts. I wish I had a Pentium 4 with an AT slot to experiment with!

It may even be possible to create a boot-up option for Win98 to boot to the command prompt with the necessary IDOS settings. Hmmm. Where's that old Pentium 4 PC with the AT slot for the ARCnet card??? (Then I'd have to go find a Mark V!)

In thinking about this, having IDOS run faster solves no problems. The AT ARCnet card is still the problem. VIEW2 doesn't run any faster on a Pentium 4 PC. You still can't run two IDOS applications simultaneously ("windowed multi-tasking") on a Pentium 4 PC even with Win98 DOS. I guess the only problem this would solve would be failing <I> computers. The other limitation is that IDOS was basically written for a specific BIOS, and if the Pentium 4 PC's BIOS chipset isn't completely compatible (and there's no definitive way to tell for sure) that could end up being a problem.

Good possibility, though!

The answers you seek might be found in the following thread.
http://www.control.com/thread/1026236859#1026237354

In reply to CSA: The version of MS-DOS used in MS Windows 98 was MS-DOS 7.x. It is possible to format a floppy boot disk so that just MS-DOS 7 is installed and without the MS Windows 98 GUI. You would do this just like creating any other MS-DOS boot floppy. You could then format a hard drive with just MS-DOS 7. There is no need to load the MS Windows 98 GUI and then unload it again or even to have any of the files for it on the hard drive.

There is also a free MS-DOS equivalent called FreeDOS. I've used this a couple of times and it seems to work fine. ConcurrentDOS (which is not free) is also available from Concurrent Controls. This is directly descended from CP/M (MS-DOS originated as a cheap knock-off of CP/M). It has multi-tasking, but I think the software has to be specially written to take advantage of multitasking (I'm not entirely sure if that is true for the later versions).

The biggest problem I have found with using old software on newer hardware is that things like drivers may no longer work because they have hard coded timing loops that run too fast. This causes problems in cases where you have to have delays between hardware register reads and/or writes. Some drivers were written with timing self-calibration to adapt to faster computers, but the self calibration routines themselves stopped working correctly when computers got faster still. This problem usually occurs only with plug-in boards (like data acquisition or network boards), and not anything on the motherboard itself.

There are programs that slow down the computer by interrupting the main program and inserting small delays. These don't help with driver problems though as the delays are too coarse grained. They are just intended to slow down old MS-DOS games enough that they are still playable.

As far as BIOS compatibility is concerned, if you know what you are doing it is possible to "patch" the BIOS in software without actually re-flashing the BIOS chip. The BIOS patch would then get loaded as either a driver or "terminate and stay resident". That requires knowing what the problem is though and being able to write a very small program to correct it.

It's also possible by the way to binary patch an executable program using a debugger. This is a skill that was more common in the past than it is today though. This means it is theoretically possible to modify the Mark V software to get it to use newer hardware, but I wouldn't want to guess just how difficult that might be in practise in this case.