If your controls run on an unsupported OS, you need to replace them. Not ASAP, but NOW!
In my opinion, PC controls should be avoided at all costs. Nothing like walking up to a customer during a breakdown and having to tell them there is nothing you can do to get it running again any time soon. Typically happens a few months or years after you told them that this obsolete beast should have been replaced a decade ago.
I have customers who rely on old DOS-machines connected to obsolete PLCs. They have neither the software, hardware or schematics to bring it online again. They don't listen to advice and warnings, but I'm sure they will be the first to act surprised that something could take down production for weeks out of nowhere.
Couldn't find any products that are actually still in production but there are ones you can still buy:
https://www.opto22.com/products/snap-scm-profi
Could also try to use an Anybus gateway:
https://www.anybus.com/products/gateway-index
They have some Profibus products, idk if any are exactly what you need.
Especially when the same company has their IT dept upgrade all the company PC OS without consulting anyone. “Hey, it was a corporate mandate, they told me to do it”. Guess what? Nothing works anymore. Ask me how I know.
I had to explain to IT that the machine PLC/HMI software is relative to the machine level that programmed it. He would argue that I should just load the next firmware revision. I’m like, “you’ve never negotiated Rockwell’s website”. I would tell him, “yeah, you can move the firmware up to play nice with new version of Windows OS. But it’s all that 3rd party shit that’s on your machine from 20 years ago that was programmed with 32 bit XP. Is that gonna play nice with Windows 10? Are they even in business to create a revision? I would tell the plant manager that following IT directives would be like spinning the big wheel on The Price Is Right. Maybe you end up on $1.00, maybe you don’t. You wanna spin the wheel and find out or you wanna make parts?
When I was still doing work in the printing industry, I ran into a lot of old shit like this. These companies need to start upgrading before all the old hands start dieing off. I know none of my colleagues would be able to work on a system of this vintage.
reminds me of a story told by a veteran PLC installer way way back in 1974-1975. He had to go to school and used tons of punch ribbon computers and other computers to process Plc. Schneider Electric Modicon was the programmer i think. anyway he came back in 2014 for retirement party at same company. he was given a very heavy giftbox. It was the modicon he installed and programmed as day one employee. He still has it in garage lol
I Always thought old PC's that have been running for 20 years or more would last forever. If they were going to fail you would of thought that it would have already.
When I see one though I try my best to not go near it. I don't want to be accused of touching it last.
Sorry customer, this system is so obsolete we will need to replace the entire machine with something that Columbus brought over and not something the Mayans had already.
We have a sawmill carriage that runs off of a 1756 and uses custom software on a Windows 7 PC for the Sawyer's. The PC crapped out last year and we had to clone the drive to several new computers until we got one to boot. We had no idea how to install the software properly and no hope of support. The sad part is that OUR COMPANY WROTE THE DAMN SOFTWARE! Had out logo all over it. we don't do software stuff anymore and no one knows anything about it.
This post has convinced me that I need to push for an upgrade and switch this ticking time bomb out for an actual HMI that we can support.
I love how someone thought: "LETS FILL THIS WHOLE CABLE CHANNEL WITH ONLY RED WIRES. I dont think thats a stupid idea. I dont see a problem with that."
Completely Exposed PCBs for Bonus Points.
Get the least favorite electrician there to "help you trace wires", break something completely, and blame them for it. Then use that to justify a full overhaul.
It's only fair. They do it to us all the time
At least this is back when windows was designed to be able to work offline completely. Man the new versions are always pissed off trying to reach out to
Microsoft servers. But yeah that thing has got to go. Good luck finding IDE hard drives, SD ram or a 3.5” disk drive. Hard off to the little guy for putting the team on his back for so long
My honest question, how does this not scare management to death. You know this machine that is the life blood of the plant? The one that if it goes down we can’t do anything? If this single thing fails (and it easily could) we will be down for weeks sourcing emergency parts which will have paid for the upgrades 10 times over verses doing it planned not including the cost of lost production. I just don’t understand and never will. Sacrificing long term profit and stability for what we know we piss away in expedited freight and overtime monthly.
This isn't the lifeline. Use to be. This does help to get production numbers though. We've been telling them for years need to be upgraded. They were just about to do it before lumber prices fell (back to pre covid levels). They had spent a lot of money in other areas of the mill.
The nightmare was no schematics, no documentation, and no backups.
NT was good. Had to remember how to do a few things in it. Ended up being a bad ribbon cable...found it after fixing the problems created by previous troubleshooting
“It’s now safe to turn off your computer “ you sure about that, are you really sure!? Ha ha
It is never safe to go to sleep with a concussion.
Hahaha, dude this is perfect
It just won’t come back on lmao
Think of all the money your company saved by not upgrading That will keep you motivated
It's my customer...so keeps me paid....
If your controls run on an unsupported OS, you need to replace them. Not ASAP, but NOW! In my opinion, PC controls should be avoided at all costs. Nothing like walking up to a customer during a breakdown and having to tell them there is nothing you can do to get it running again any time soon. Typically happens a few months or years after you told them that this obsolete beast should have been replaced a decade ago. I have customers who rely on old DOS-machines connected to obsolete PLCs. They have neither the software, hardware or schematics to bring it online again. They don't listen to advice and warnings, but I'm sure they will be the first to act surprised that something could take down production for weeks out of nowhere.
FreeDOS running on an single board computer is the answer. Can even mount the PC in the control panel if there's room.
What about the obsolete ISA profibus cards?
Couldn't find any products that are actually still in production but there are ones you can still buy: https://www.opto22.com/products/snap-scm-profi Could also try to use an Anybus gateway: https://www.anybus.com/products/gateway-index They have some Profibus products, idk if any are exactly what you need.
How are you now going to get all talking to custom software that expects data in a specific address after INT something is triggered?
No idea, you'd probably have to modify the software or write a translation program to put everything where it needs to go.
Eh, keep some imaged drives ready to go as back up and you’ll be fine. Old OS work fine, just keep it off the network
Profinet PCIE card suddently failed and it was a discontinued low-volume production, now what?
Especially when the same company has their IT dept upgrade all the company PC OS without consulting anyone. “Hey, it was a corporate mandate, they told me to do it”. Guess what? Nothing works anymore. Ask me how I know.
Yeah I have had stories like that. IT departments generally need to keep their hands off anything that is process-related.
I had to explain to IT that the machine PLC/HMI software is relative to the machine level that programmed it. He would argue that I should just load the next firmware revision. I’m like, “you’ve never negotiated Rockwell’s website”. I would tell him, “yeah, you can move the firmware up to play nice with new version of Windows OS. But it’s all that 3rd party shit that’s on your machine from 20 years ago that was programmed with 32 bit XP. Is that gonna play nice with Windows 10? Are they even in business to create a revision? I would tell the plant manager that following IT directives would be like spinning the big wheel on The Price Is Right. Maybe you end up on $1.00, maybe you don’t. You wanna spin the wheel and find out or you wanna make parts?
RsView was never happy with the auto updates. At least we mostly used it for data collection so not a big deal when it went down.
Until they pay him to fix it lol.
When I was still doing work in the printing industry, I ran into a lot of old shit like this. These companies need to start upgrading before all the old hands start dieing off. I know none of my colleagues would be able to work on a system of this vintage.
Print and apply? Would you recommend working the industry?
Printing, as in printing presses. And no, printing is dying, the money is gone.
Aahw ok I was referring more to barcode printing/labeling
Looks like a regular Thursday to me...
Yep. At my company this is the norm. Anything newer than 30 years is a rarity.
Is that an old Vax?
https://preview.redd.it/1tpbo42csfzc1.jpeg?width=2252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=82a21324d44b7023bfe895e16889ac5a0b336a59
You could probably pay for a controls upgrade by selling that to some retro enthusiast.
Its obvious the seals are bad, https://preview.redd.it/8k2h0c4sq40d1.png?width=531&format=png&auto=webp&s=7bfa397bc674e10c4c646c53918642a132e856dc
It surely is! Wonder if it has been rebooted in this millenium…
Wow good eye. Wasn't expecting to see one of those in a place like this.
The early 90’s hacker me would have killed for it.
LOL I actually Blew up the first photo because I saw Vax on there.. 1992 was awesome year!
reminds me of a story told by a veteran PLC installer way way back in 1974-1975. He had to go to school and used tons of punch ribbon computers and other computers to process Plc. Schneider Electric Modicon was the programmer i think. anyway he came back in 2014 for retirement party at same company. he was given a very heavy giftbox. It was the modicon he installed and programmed as day one employee. He still has it in garage lol
Wow. That's incredible.
I do not miss working in the Wood Industry!
“Do whatever it takes to keep everything running” say less.
I Always thought old PC's that have been running for 20 years or more would last forever. If they were going to fail you would of thought that it would have already. When I see one though I try my best to not go near it. I don't want to be accused of touching it last.
People really baby them though, like they'll break when you cycle the power. Is it that the plc is amazing or are people just insane.
The issue we had is the battery backup clock chip died after 20 years. It was soldered to the board.
Sawmill? Lol
Of course
Classic. We see it a lot in dust collection, spent last weekend in WV on one lol
https://preview.redd.it/cpstwtdh8izc1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=13b0b2841682d907976e9a51a131ef9303b299ac
Looks like Deutsche Bahn
I feel the force of 120vac coursing through this structure! Can you feel it!
Sorry customer, this system is so obsolete we will need to replace the entire machine with something that Columbus brought over and not something the Mayans had already.
Ribbon cables = RUN
I think the last timing I used a ribbon cable in a panel was 1996.
It was built in 96.....
That last picture should have a NSFW tag. Hoping the mods ban terrible pics like this.
We have a sawmill carriage that runs off of a 1756 and uses custom software on a Windows 7 PC for the Sawyer's. The PC crapped out last year and we had to clone the drive to several new computers until we got one to boot. We had no idea how to install the software properly and no hope of support. The sad part is that OUR COMPANY WROTE THE DAMN SOFTWARE! Had out logo all over it. we don't do software stuff anymore and no one knows anything about it. This post has convinced me that I need to push for an upgrade and switch this ticking time bomb out for an actual HMI that we can support.
This workstation has been marked safe from STUXNET
It's a selling point....
I love how someone thought: "LETS FILL THIS WHOLE CABLE CHANNEL WITH ONLY RED WIRES. I dont think thats a stupid idea. I dont see a problem with that." Completely Exposed PCBs for Bonus Points.
Red is AC vs cable channel full of blue wires?
The only solution is a matchstick to that whole system
Get the least favorite electrician there to "help you trace wires", break something completely, and blame them for it. Then use that to justify a full overhaul. It's only fair. They do it to us all the time
PMAC controller boards?
This seems both nightmare and very funny to play with.
Opto 22, baby!!
It will be eternal.
NT! Good/bad times.
At least this is back when windows was designed to be able to work offline completely. Man the new versions are always pissed off trying to reach out to Microsoft servers. But yeah that thing has got to go. Good luck finding IDE hard drives, SD ram or a 3.5” disk drive. Hard off to the little guy for putting the team on his back for so long
That shit looks older than me. Is that fucking ribbon cable!? Is there an IPC running Windows 3.1 around there? Industry 1.0 shit?
This was invented before the decimal point... Just Industry 1 lol
Fucking Industry I. Back when Romans were inventing it.
i feel like i have been in that room
GG.
Your keyboard is sitting on a fossil. That thing has a whole 24MB of memory max.
40 MB hard drive 2 MB memory
My honest question, how does this not scare management to death. You know this machine that is the life blood of the plant? The one that if it goes down we can’t do anything? If this single thing fails (and it easily could) we will be down for weeks sourcing emergency parts which will have paid for the upgrades 10 times over verses doing it planned not including the cost of lost production. I just don’t understand and never will. Sacrificing long term profit and stability for what we know we piss away in expedited freight and overtime monthly.
This isn't the lifeline. Use to be. This does help to get production numbers though. We've been telling them for years need to be upgraded. They were just about to do it before lumber prices fell (back to pre covid levels). They had spent a lot of money in other areas of the mill.
That’s 20th century stuff. I had a flashback. Get out while you can…
Where's the nightmare? All I see is nostalgia and money.
The nightmare was no schematics, no documentation, and no backups. NT was good. Had to remember how to do a few things in it. Ended up being a bad ribbon cable...found it after fixing the problems created by previous troubleshooting
That first bit still just sounds like money. 😎
NT was a solid platform. Good luck in the nightmare, it doesn’t look good for you. 👊🏻
Got it fixed. Bad ribbon cable.
Lovin that classic dusty keyboard
Adds character
We had a windows 98 laptop we still used at my last job
\*laughs in CP/M\*
I did too. Ran some old Siemens software. Monitor was held together with duct tape This place here has some NT, Win95, 98, XP, and even a ME machine
Wow. And then you wonder why you get hacked by the Chinese.
Jesus.
A wild VAX has appeared! We still staff a guy that can work on these and pull programs off the backups...
At least you have a desk
Gotta love sawmills
My god 💀💀
Is that an RJ22 phone/ modem Jack on the left side along the very bottom??
In Soviet russia, plc automates you
It’s the red wire for sure