AB 1784-PCMK With Windows NT

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Thread Starter

Niall M Watson

Dear List

Does anyone have experience of installing a PCMK card with Windows NT (+RSLinx 2.0) Do we need additional drivers (we only have 95 drivers)?
Any other tips welcome!

Thanks in advance

Niall Watson

PES Automation Ltd.

Phone: 01283 741333 Fax: 01283 562303
http:\\www.pes-automation.co.uk
 
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Sipos Jozsef

You don't need any driver for 1784 -PCMK if you are using it with Windows NT. The RSLinx itself contains all the drivers which is necessary to use that card.

Steps to setup the card.
- Start RSLinx
- Select Configure drivers from Communication menu
- From the list select 1784-PCMK devices and push Add new button
- In the "configure Allen-Bradley 1784-PCMK device" dialog set the parameters.
Station name: Whatever you want to call
Station Number : The station number of your programming device on the DH or DH+ net.
Board type: PCMK
Network type: DHPLUS or DH486 whatever you use
Board address : usually D800
Baud rate: The baudrate which is used on your DH+ or DH485 net
Interrupt : usually 10 or 9

Jozsef Sipos
 
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Colin T. Marsh

Niall,
1. Ensure a 1784-PCMK card works in your notebook, before you buy.
2. If there are any problems use a small serial interface to DH+.
3. Serial interfaces can be used with other PCs and computers.

DataLink has a palm-sized serial DF1 (PLC CH 0) interface to DH+ that's more rugged than the PCMCIA card/cable format and can be powered from a PS2's (6 pin DIN) keyboard/mouse connector.
http://www.dltech.net/products/DL3000.html
Colin
 
J
I have 2 gateway solo 2500's. Both run Windows NT4.0. PCMK works on one, but not the other. I wiped the non-cooperative computer and installed Win98, and now it works just fine!

Moral of the story: Just because you get it to work on one machine doesn't mean it will work again on another. RSLinx under NT in general is tricky because of the HAL. I have not tried W2K, but I find that comm setups are actually easier and more stable under 98 than NT because they can swap drivers in and out easier.

$.02

--Joe Jansen
 
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Bruce Axtell

In Feb. I purchased a Gateway 9300SL notebook with NT. I did have to go through some gymnastics with A-B to get the card to work...but don't remember all the details. It's one of those things you do once...and then use the tool. Once installed, the 1784-PCMK card worked fine. Seems I downloaded specific instructions
for NT from A-B's website. Your quickest bet is to let A-B walk you through it.

My biggest complaint is that this machine has an 18 gig HD which Gateway partitioned as C: = 2 gig (FAT) and D: = 16 gig (NTFS). Since the 2-gig partition is a limitation of NT, I was thinking of
"upgrading" to Windows 2000. Has anyone run a PCMK card on 2000?

Also, some programs cannot see the NTFS partition and do not see the D: drive at all. I would like to either get rid of the D: partition, or change the ratio to about 75% C: and 25% D: since I
have essentially run out of disk space on C:, even after installing everything I can on D:

Looking for suggestions, caveats, etc.

TIA

Bruce
 
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Robert McDonald

I've been waiting for six months now for an answer from AB on how to use the PCMK from Windows 2000. The official answer I got around 4 months ago was "we are working on that". If you find out, please let me know. :)

regards,
Robert.
 
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Alex Pavloff

Look at PowerQuest's Partition Magic program. It'll let you resize partitions. I think it'll also let you change NTFS to FAT and FAT32 and vice-versa, but I'm not sure, because I only have 3.0 and the latest is 4.0.

It's a scary task, and one should, of course, make sure one has backups of the important data, but Partition Magic hasn't messed up on me yet!
 
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Microsoft changed the way that you interface with the NDIS drivers in Win2k this effectively negated any microdrivers written for NT4.0. This was part of implement/grafting plug and pray onto Win2k.

The driver for the PCMK card is available and included in RSLinx 2.2 which is available for download at www.software.rockwell.com from
the software updates site. (if you have something other than linx lite you'll need to have a serial number that is in support)
 
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Christopher Griffin

PCMK and NT 4.0 work fine the only time you'll have trouble is with older versions of third
party plug and play software...cardwizard etc... If you only have rslinx lite you can and should upgrade to 2.10.118 or later before
going to NT4.0 as rslinx 2.0 has not been tested on anything newer than NT 4.0 service pack 3. (which doesn't meet MS's definition of Y2k ready) additionaly RSLINX 2.0 will NOT load on NT 4.0 sp4 w/o a patch available at www.software.rockwell.com from the support
library. your best bet would be to get the rslinx download from the software updates section of the web site.
 
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NT 4.0's limitation is 4 GIG per partition not two gig. Win2k has no such limitation but there is no PCMK driver for RSLINX any earlier than 2.2 which is released currently as a release candidate. Don't bother using rslinx 2.10.x on Win2k as the only working drivers are RS232 and TCP/IP.
 
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> NT 4.0's limitation is 4 GIG per partition not two gig.

Huh?

<checks Drive F: on current PC, which is running Windows NT 4.0>

Filesystem: NTFS
Capacity: 8GB

<checks Drive C: on Windows 98 box>

Filesystem: FAT32
Capacity: 8GB

I'm sorry, you are misinformed.
 
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Microsoft Knowledge Base Arcticle ID: Q119497 sez:
--
WORKAROUND
Move the hard drive to another system running Windows NT and attach it to the same make, model controller as on the original system. Run disk
administrator and make a larger NTFS partition of up to 7.8gb formatted. As long as the drive is being translated, the partition table entry should
contain valid starting Cylinder, Side, and sector values used for booting. The drive can then be moved back to the original system and ready for
Windows NT installation.
--

Ugh. Thats no fun at all. Partition Magic, by Powerquest, might be able to resize the drive after you install, though. I'm not sure.
 
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Ranjan Acharya

Regarding the hard drive thing with Windows NT.

Be careful ... I am no NT wiz but I have always observed that the C: is best left at 4GB and other volumes e.g., D:, E: as either primary partitions or logical partitions in an extended partition should be your monster partitions.

PartitionMagic will indeed easily resize any partition to almost anything you have space for. However, be careful with the 4GB thing since there are various bugs in various service level revisions of Windows that may render the partition not bootable.

In my experience, leave C: with just NT and leave it at less than or equal to 4GB. I have monkeyed around with it before, and been burned. Also, make sure that you have at least SP5 before you do anything and make sure that you have multiple boot choices in BOOT.INI to alternative locations of the boot system in case the partitions get re-numbered.

RJ
 
We have multiple Dell laptops running NT4.0 and a couple versions of PCMK's. I forget the details, but you want to be careful when doing the install. As I remeber when the prompt ask if you want to install the driver for the new card select NO. Several of us did'nt and suffered some real problems. RSLinx will take care of running the card. Once it is up and running, few problems have been experienced.
 
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