Control.com - Nerds in Control

A common PLC language would allow vendors to compete for development systems with a level playing field. In theory, the end result would be dramatically improved development software. Remember Taylor or ICOM? ICOM competed with A-B and had a very nice product (still the best I have ever seen, IMHO).

Bill

What made the ICOM software so great? I've never seen it or used it, I am curious. Was it ahead of its time, or would it still stand to be good software for today's PLCs?

~Ken

It that time frame (I remember running it under DOS v4.01 on a 12 MHz 80286) it was fast, and it's functions laid out with the ladder logic programmer in mind. Their technical support was excellent - you'd have a good chance of talking to one of the developers when you called, and they'd know the answer ... and if you found a bug or had a reasonable improvement idea it would often be fixed or added in the next release.

I can't recall the details, but ICOM was eventually bought out by Allen-Bradley/Rockwell Software, and a lot of ICOM technology was incorporated into RSLogix. If you use RSLogix you've seen what is in many ways a Windows version of it, and some of the legacy software Rockwell sells (for instance, for the PLC-2) is essentially the last ICOM release.

They have a website reminiscing on their past at http://www.icomlore.org/ you might find interesting.

I was Wintegrator #1, ICOM sold "Wintelligent" software and I became a Win Tegrator. They had a "cool" culture, with stipends for sterios in offices and cubes, pinball machines, pool tables, beer in the pop machine and cutting edge software. You called with a bug and it was fixed and a patch sent to you sometimes that day. This led to other issues... but very customer oriented.

Way ahead of thier time led by a guy who I met... I walked into his huge office and he was typing on 2 computers, right and left handed, writing code on a big screen (which was unheard of at that time). He had a big screen TV on with the news going, 2 huge speakers pumping out Van Halen and was on the phone when we walked in... needless to say I was impressed. I think his name was Scott Zifferer....

Automated train sets and coffee makers running PLC and HMI software in the early days for show demos... they had a stake in a micro brewery that they automated.

When they sold to AB, I joked that they would be IBM'd out of their culture. Sure enough... One bit of history and it is not politically correct... when first bought they were going to call the RSI portion of the company Rocksoft (i.e. Rockwell Software). There was a show the 1st or 2nd weekend they were owned by Rockwell in I think California and they went there with a big tag line banner and hats, theirs not mine of "Dump your Wonderware and get your Rocksoft"... Needless to say, Monday morning the name was changed to Rockwell Software and the IBMing began. The cool culture died in my opinion, that day. I still have a hat that says Rocksoft and some ICOM shirts and jackets, I bring out when I feed like changing the world.

Not very many cutting edge innovative companies willing to do those things....

Dave

You may also remember the polically incorrect "model" that ICOM had (I think on a calendar) and also had at the Detroit International Programmable Controller show around 1991. There was a line probably 200 long for a signed poster of her.

I do still have the ICOM "World Tour" polo shirt I drag out once in a while. These are fond memories of a much younger industry.

Regards,
Russ Kinner
SSOE, Inc.
Phoenix, AZ USA

Hey Dave - I think that was Scott's partner. Joe was the 'code' guru... and had the biggest TV. :)

It was a very cool culture, and is similar to Wonderware in the early days. I am working with a software company here in Toronto for secure remote access (route1.com), and they have beer kegs and the lot as well... regardless of the industry, the software developer is not normal. :)

Innovation has been very soft for a long time... but I suggest that it might pick up in the next 5 years... we will have to to survive!

Cheers from: Jeremy Pollard, CET The Caring Canuckian! www[.]tsuonline.com

Control Design www[.]controldesignmag.com
Manufacturing Automation www[.]automationmag.com

3 Red Pine Court, RR# 2 Shanty Bay, Ontario L0L 2L0 705.739.7155 Cell # 705.725.3579

You are correct it was Joe Mentor... remember the long hair... another culture thing...

I agree we need to be more impressed by the code and not the coder.

Dave

Another, slightly tangental reminiscence... Phil Katz (of PKZIP fame, and later, ending up drinking himself to death) did a stint as a programmer for
Graysoft (later bought by FasTrak SoftWorks) on their line of PLC programming tools.

And isn’t it funny that some of the 'features' of the s/ware are still not implemented?? They were so focused on features, and usability, and
customer service... as was a lot of the third party combatants.

Now it's all about the dough!! And this is what you will use... a throwback!!

The culture was everything... now???? We can only hope.

Cheers from: Jeremy Pollard, CET The Caring Canuckian!
www[.]tsuonline.com

In reply to Ken Emmons Jr.: The ICOM software was just very well designed from the point of view of the user. Someone took a very close look at what a user had to do to write or troubleshoot a PLC program, and made sure that each software function was easily and logically accessed with a minimum of keystrokes. There was menu driven access for someone who was not familiar with the software and keyboard shortcuts for those who were. What made it good was not so much the presence of any particular feature, but rather how well everything worked together.

ICOM was eventually purchased by Rockwell (Allen Bradley), and so became part of that company. The ICOM software that everyone speaks of though was for MS-DOS only, so it didn't survive the transition to MS-Windows. It is still fondly remembered by many though as an example of good software design. It is however obsolete now because it is an MS-DOS package.

When the first PLC programming packages which used MS-WIndows came out, very few (or rather none that I saw) worked as well as the better MS-DOS packages. Ease of use and productivity took a severe downturn at that point and it is arguable whether it has ever recovered to the same level again.

There seemed to be a very distinct change in the nature of PLC programming software which occurred during the transition period from MS-DOS to MS-Windows. The better MS-DOS software seemed to be written by people who actually understood what their users needed. Most of the MS-Windows stuff though seemed to be written by people who were simply *told* what someone thought the users needed. The difference is subtle, but quite tangible when you experience it.

ICOM also sold Windows based software - WINTelligent series Winlogic 5 Winview, Winlinx, WINdcs (never made production), etc. were all ICOM
products before the dreaded merge.

Dave

I have to say that ICOM was very progresive and I enjoyed your recollections of that company. Imagine where the software would be if they hadn't become part of Rockwell.

Yes, and many, many of the first (and some much later) Windows programs had that as their sole attribute. They were laughable in comparison to some of the mature DOS programs. This, sadly, continues to this day. That's why I still use LM90 on GE. On the other hand, some of the DOS programs were pretty bizarre. S5 comes to mind. A good tool is one an experienced person can run without a manual. We have some bad Windows programs that don't even come with a manual and wouldn't be worth learning if you could use anything else.

Regards

cww

S5 was bizzare because it was a half baked port over from CPM which is what the Siemens software ran. Germany was using this and because Americans
prefered DOS it was ported but never really rewritten or very good IMO. It got better in later rewrites, but the entire history tells the whole
story... not just parts of it.

Dave

That's funny, in a bizarre way, since MSDOS started out as a 16 bit CP/M knock-off (QDOS) from Seattle Computer Products, and which Microsoft bought so they'd have an OS to deliver to IBM for the original PC. The main differences - QDOS used a FAT-based file system (although it still supported FCBs, and MSDOS still used them for certain things, like CHKDSK), and the user interface was more intuitive. Tim Paterson did a lot of this initial work, first at SCP, and later, for Microsoft. I looked around, and found this interesting set of articles a Tim's website: http://www.patersontech.com/Dos/Articles.aspx

Agreed, and if you have used both, you will see that other than a command line, they are completely different in a universal standards sort of way. :)

Bottom line is the PG685 stuff ran on CPM and ran differently than the attempted DOS versions with their CPM keyboard keystroke mappings, etc. It was a dog, and by today's standards (as with 90% of other software packages) it was just a dog (no offense meant to dogs).

Time does not permit me to go into each and every detail of why it is different, but I could having used it for many years (I will have to enter the wayback machine first)... Sorry another analogy to a cartoon that few may remember.

Dave

Depending on the meaning, I've either run both (CP/M, briefly, a long, long time ago) and DOS starting with v2.11, or neither. We've needed to support a variety of PLCs over the years, but no Siemens stuff yet.

Speaking of dogs (again, not to demean these noble beasts) one very doggy piece of software came to mind when I read this... remember Allen-Bradley's
DOS program for their IMC motion control products? I believe it was officially named "Offline Development Software" - "ODS" - but I remember it's name by thinking "odious"... my general impression after battling with it.

Ah, yes - the Wayback Machine. Mister Peabody was one sharp cat, er... dog, as it were.

It's been a while so the details are a little fuzzy, but I could edit ladder almost as fast as someone could describe what they wanted.

They had user definable shortcut keys for ladder commands, I used "O" for NO contact, "C" for NC contact, "T" for a TMR box... I don't think that the Enter key was even required, if I recall correctly.

Also very handy was the ability to enter the first few letters of a address symbol and press a key to see all matches. You could then arrow down to the one you wanted and press Enter. I had a system where the first letters of the symbol identified it by group, such as pbxxxx for a button, or crxxx for a relay. You could type cr and press a key and you saw a list of all control relays in alphabetical order. Same for timers, counters and so on.

If you asked me for a normally open run pushbutton in a rung, I could arrow to the desired location, type "O PBR/ Enter" If more than one symbol started with PBR, it was a little slower (but not much).

I have not become that fluent with RSLogix, but it seems to take many more keystrokes to accomplish the same results. And forget about using a mouse, way too slow.

Ken I still use ICOM's windows based products for Allen-Bradley's SLC-500/PLC-5 processors.

One of the best features I think is the ability to do a search cross reference on any instruction/address in your logic.

I concur. There are many features that ICOM WinLogix and AI software had that is still not in RSLogix.

I have had to write my own code in VB to emulate some of these features.

Cheers from: Jeremy Pollard, CET The Caring Canuckian! www[.]tsuonline.com

Control Design www[.]controldesign.com
Manufacturing Automation www[.]automationmag.com

3 Red Pine Court, RR# 2 Shanty Bay, Ontario L0L 2L0 705.739.7155 Cell # 705.725.3579

Ok, during that period I was at University of Texas, majoring in EE and Comp Sci. The profile you guys throw out of a developer is the old school stereotype (I even looked that way for a few periods of my life). I worked for one company where we had a full arcade, several pool tables, fridge full of Jolt Cola, and a slide to get from the programmer's floor to the cafeteria. It wasn't uncommon to see someone sleeping in their cube at 2 or 3 in the am. The same company had dress code for all employees but when it got to dev crew it said "Please wear clothes and bathe"...

I am recently new in the automation industry, from open source development. Currently working on ruby code to connect to ControlLogix... got Micrologix and SLCs down...