AB to phase out block I/O Rumor

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Thread Starter

Bob Peterson

A rumor was repeated to me a few minutes ago that AB is planning to phase out block I/O.

Anyone else hear this?

Care to comment AB?

It sort of makes sense. Its a product that is long in the tooth and not all that easy to use (compared to flex I/O, for instance). Plus it does not have the new I/O busses available such as Devicenet.

Bob Peterson
 
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Juan De los Santos

I don?t know why any one can be surprised if this happens, Schneider has been phasing out products with less of 5 years in the market, and the worst part is that the new products are not always compatible with the phased out. At least Rockwell still supporting old buses like RIO.

Regards.

Juan De los Santos
 
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Larry Lawver

Bob---


While I hope someone from Rockwell responds, I can tell you that, as one of the few distributors that has done well with 1791 Block I/O, I have not been advised of its overall obsolescence. The 1791-IOBA and 1791-IOBB went into the Silver Series in June 2001, but the rest of the 1791 Blocks are still out there.

Note that the Block I/O naming has been applied to a lot of current and future products, including ArmorBlock, CompactBlock, and PointBlock.

Further, in what I expect to be the source of the information you heard, many of the original 1792 ArmorBlock products are moving into the Silver Series as ArmorBlock MaXum and FLEXArmor replace them. See
"http://www.ab.com/silver/1792.html":http://www.ab.com/silver/1792.html for more about that.


Hope this helps!


Larry Lawver

Rexel / Central Florida
 
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James Ingraham

I have heard the rumor as well, although I can't really attest to its veracity. However, I can say that A-B has told me that they are NOT planning on updating Block I/O to any of the new buses (eg DeviceNet). This would seem to be a death knell for Block I/O, but it should at least be around for a few years.

-James
Sage Automation, Inc.
 
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Eduardo Manuel C. Cipriano

Hello,

Maybe Ken Roach of Rockwell could comment on this part of issue.

[email protected]
Eduardo Manuel C. Cipriano
Sr. Systems Engr.
Systems Engineering Department
Yokogawa Phils. Inc.
 
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