Control.com - Nerds in Control

I have a number of lines that run Wintelligent. These applications are hosted on aging PCs that are becoming increasingly unreliable. I am not presently in a position to upgrade the HMI package, but would rather migrate this application to newer, presumably more reliable, hardware.

The problem is that some of these applications communicate with the PLC via data highway plus (DH+) and use the older ISA bus version of the "KT" card. Newer PCs, of course, have a PCI bus.

Has anyone successfully used used a PKTX card with Wintelligent?

We upgraded old PC running Wintelligent View, and communicating with Wintelligent Linx on DH+ to Windows XP Pro SP2. We installed PKTX PCI cards and replaced WinLinx by current version of RS-Linx with DDE/OPC option.

Wintelligent View HMI software is running good in Window XP. We just configured topics into RSlinx DDE, and changed the access paths into View configuration to point to RS-Linx DDE. As long as your old software is using DDE, you should be able to direct it to RS-Linx. We have been forced to upgrade Logic5 to RS-Logix5, because we cannot figure how to tell Logic5 to use RS-Linx as communication.

Hope this help

I have not but I do have a few WinView systems out there. I have changed them over to Ethernet and either gotten a sidecard for the PLC 5 or put in a linx gateway or a Controllogix gateway and bridged Ethernet to the processor.

I also know there is a device (I forget the number) that can sit on a DIN rail and has Ethernet and for sure serial but I think also one that has DH+ on it.

There are numerous alternatives but my feeling is get a Controllocix small backplane, a power supply, an Ethernet card and a DH/RIO card. Tie the DH to your highway, then via Ethernet you can bridge linx to the DH+ and you can program etc. any of your DH+ PLC's.

I would need more info to really give a strong recommendation.

Dave Ferguson

This doesn't directly answer your question, but you can still get new PCs with ISA bus if you use a passive backplane PC. You can get them from companies such as Advantech and other industrial PC manufacturers.

I also have a need to upgrade the hardware on some InTouch systems for similar reasons, i.e, computer getting flakey.

Have you had good service from Advantech?

Thanks
Don

In reply to Don: I replaced 8 or 10 computers in some older test systems with Advantech passive backplane PCs. The replacement was part of a project to improve the reliability of the system.

The PCs needed several ISA slots for the data acquisition boards. The original PCs had lasted a long time, but we couldn't maintain them anymore. Switching to more modern style PCs wasn't an option because that would require replacing the data acquisition boards with newer ones which in turn meant an almost complete rewrite of the test software.

I spent some time picking out the exact case, backplane, CPU boards, and other features that I wanted. I also ordered them with certain third party components such as solid state hard drives and MS-DOS.

I had no problems with the hardware and I was happy with the service from Advantech. It may have also helped that the dealer for the region was around the corner and was already a regular supplier of industrial components to us.

The passive backplane systems usually come with a mixture of ISA and PCI slots. The "backplane" is just a PC board with connectors (and a few other components). The equivalent of the "motherboard" is a card which plugs into the slots and straddles both the ISA and PCI slots in a special location in the middle (which is how it can talk to both).

I will warn you that these are more expensive than a regular PC. It's very solid hardware though. We used a full size 19 inch rack mount case for several reasons which were special to the application. There are also smaller cases with fewer slots which might be suitable to your application.

Make sure you pick a case with easily accessible filters. We also replaced the old CRT monitors with LCD monitors while we were at it. We were able to buy some nice VESA mount monitor stands so we could adjust the LCD monitors to line up with the windows in the cabinets.