The Craftmans Shop > New from Old
The Sequel - Oh Blimey I bought a CNC Lathe (Beaver TC 20)
PekkaNF:
Have you tried with one to max 1,5m long serial cable without any extras. I remember having same sort of problmes with long cables or faulty adapters. Laptops strugle with RS-232, their serial port buffer hardly never goes very negative, often it is even under -5v and any troule with cable is diaster. I never used flat cable, it was short shilded cable or I could not even get it to connect.
Another thing is that all the old Siemens programs configured the port in the S5 application program, if you didn't have the serial port on COM3 (from my memory) - tough luck and you have to do some fuckery in the BIOS. I did not touch that, I let others who thougt they knew.
Then again Sinumerik might be different on that one too.
Pekka
awemawson:
Pekka I agree about flat cable - I'm only using it in a temporary adaptor set up for the analyser. (Though Siemens use about 1.5 meters of the stuff to link the X121 RS232 port on the CPU card to the socket on the operators panel.)
The cable I've been using in the main is the one that I can happily load the 820T from and also dump back ups - usual screened RS232 stuff.
Guests for lunch today so not much will happen, but I've ordered one of those gizmo's that Moray linked to, along with a MAX3232 board to convert RS232 / TTL. It looks a generally useful bit of kit at a very low price. It hopefully will let me more easily see character length to find this framing error thingy. Trying on a conventional 'scope is a pain as the triggering is inconsistent (as is the data I'm looking at).
This version of STEP5 has a drop down box to select which COM port to use - lucky as I only have COM2: available, but the silly thing is that the bit where the com port is selected doesn't have anything to select the ports parameters.
One has to remember this program was written in an age when expectations were far less, and things have moved on considerably since then in terms of usability.
awemawson:
A bit of progress, but I've been delayed by moving a manure heap and reseeding more ground, to say nothing of still fighting the fly plague :bang:
OK Moray kindly pointed me at a cheap 'logic analyser' that would let me capture signals between the STEP5 program on the Toughbook, and the Siemens 820T controller. But these signals are at RS232 levels and the analyser is expecting TTL levels.
No big issue - either make or buy a converter based on the MAX3232 chip that does precisely this conversion. So, the USB analyser, a MAX3232 board, and some 9 pin IDC plugs and sockets ordered, all of which came to hand yesterday.
The MAX3232 board needs a 5 volt supply, so I modified a USB cable to give me this, and made up a short Male, Male, Female adaptor cable for the 9 pin Toughbook serial port to allow connection to the converter card as well as onwards to the 820T controller.
First I set it all up just transmitting from the PC using the "COPY CON COM2:" command in a DOS box, and sure enough up it came on the analyser.
Then I tried connecting the serial port onwards to the controller, but no way would it go 'on line' Much chasing about then it dawned on me, the little MAX3232 pcb has one "RS232 to TTL" and one "TTL to RS232" port connected (the MAX3232 has two of each) - what I wanted, as I was just monitoring the interface, was a pair of "RS232 to TTL" converters. What was happening was that the RS232 output of the PCB was in parallel with the RS232 output of the 820T controller and clobbering it :bang:
Oh well, best laid plans of men and mice . . . . etc !
Frustratingly the PCB was laid out such that there was no realistic way of using the other port on the MAX3232, but I have found another version, a "Sparkfun BOB-11189" that doesn't embody a 9 pin Sub D, but does bring out all the inputs and outputs to accessible places - one on order from Farnell.
But what I HAVE manged to confirm, is that the STEP5 PLC monitoring software is definitely altering the COM2: port settings to 'Even Parity' each time it is run, and thus generating the 'framing errors' as the controller expects 1 start bit, 8 bit data, no parity bit, 2 stop bits ie and 11 bit word, but it is getting a 12 bit word with even parity !!!! No idea how or where, and still seeking enlightenment :coffee:
. . .so that's the current 'state of play'
awemawson:
A tiny bit more progress, (or probably more confusion), I've been pointed to an '.INI' file buried deep in the file structure of STEP5, that holds settings for all the COM ports from 1 to 6.
Sure enough it had EVEN for the parity bit for COM2: that I am using. I edited it to 'NONE', ran the program, and it STILL sets it up as EVEN parity :bang:
. . . my head hurts !
russ57:
Did you also use mode to set what you need? Clearly some very odd interactions between all the bit players in this drama.
If only they would exit stage left and leave the main characters to read the script...
I would think, as a last resort, you could set an arduino or similar to act as a protocol converter.
Last thought
Can you reinstall using the new ini file? It may just use it to set some run config when it is first installed /configured
Russ
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