Ecoms Continually Lock Up

[rswolff]

not sure why you got the fax? perhaps someone turned off the message unit and turned the fax to answer mode.
you can reach me easier on my cell at <deleted>.

I concur....I don't believe its a noise issue either....I'm pretty isolated from the rest of the plant....and it doesn't appear that I have nodes dropping in and out, or any lost or fragmented packets.

I can almost always force the Ecom to stop talking to the processor by simply making an online edit over the network. Once I accept, the change will always go through, but I'll get an error from the programming s/w (I neglected to write it down and won't be able to check until Monday) and thats all she wrote. The plc actually goes back to run but will no longer communicate to the Ecom. The Ecom is still network ready (i.e. I can still ping and change its settings). I can't easily get to the enclosures with the h/w. The six in question are mounted 15-20ft up a wall, and there are usually skids or equipment blocking access.

It almost appears that during the download process the Ecom is still accepting the Read requests from the other nodes. As soon as the processor goes back online either the Ecom or the processor do something that causes the problem. I believe its related to the stacked messages.  Would this cause some sort of a timeout or some other problem if the processor was paused for 3-4 seconds (possibly longer) during a problem load?

I'll pull out the h/w settings and post tomorrow.

[rswolff]

i'll see if I can post a network layout diagram.....I have one in Autocad

not sure why Darth Ladder believes the plant blew up....it was simply disassembled atom by atom, converted to dark matter and then 'saddled' to an energy beam and transported several hundred light years from its original location where its was converted back to its original matter form and reassembled. Since the new location was identical to the original, none of the occupants in the plant is any the wiser. But since space apparently is expanding we should be able to visit them shortly.

[Controls Guy]

Don't forget that this will now put you in a new time zone and remember to adjust the PLC clocks.

[BobO]

Don't forget that this will now put you in a new time zone and remember to adjust the PLC clocks.

No. He just needs to move to MX at it's earliest availability and use the NETTIME instruction and Time Sync functions to manage it. Of course that means we will need to go ahead and add IPv6 support, since I doubt that we will be able to manage his Intergalactic network with IPv4 addressing. Crap...that's gonna be another hit to the schedule.

OTOH, he didn't seem too cheery about using Host products in the future, so I guess MX is off the table. Tis a shame. While Koyo ties my hands in many cases, I might actually be able to make the issues go away were this an MX problem.

[ATU]

One thought.  

Also just for clarification, are you getting a CPU LED fault on the 06's? Just one or all?

If you are, then my guess (and it is only a guess) is that you just might have some noise getting into the communications either in the serial port or the ECOM and since you are doing a data write, its probably stomping on someplace in memory that is faulting out the CPU. Take another look at the shielding on the serial port and the network cables. If you are using Shielded Ethernet cable assemblies, look at the grounding of the switches. The ground on the ECOM is isolated (I think). However, if all the switches are grounded then the cables between switches would be grounded at both ends. It could also be a faulty switch. Just because its new, it doesn't necessarily mean that its beyond suspect. Also, what protocol are you using on the Serial port? I would disable all the ones that are not used.

 

[Controls Guy]

Of course that means we will need to go ahead and add IPv6 support, since I doubt that we will be able to manage his Intergalactic network with IPv4 addressing.

That's a long wire.  Transmission rate may have to be reduced so far that it reduces bandwidth so low that by the time you get the time stamp, it'll be out of date, plus it'll be totally invalid in format as we'll have moved from the Gregorian to the Obamian calendar.