Our company wants to buy 5 MK-V <I> ARCNET cards. Please help me with any contacts/suppliers??

 

If your Company uses operator interfaces with IDOS (called <I>), then your Company will find it very difficult to purchase them, except from a source of used or "new, old stock" cards (both of which will be very expensive). The ARCnet cards used in <I>s and in very early GE Mark V HMIs (running older MS-Windows versions and CIMPLICITY) were legacy ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) bus cards, and those cards are no longer manufactured by anyone in the world.

There have been reports of a company that "refurbishes" the cards, and of one that was "manufacturing" them using ASIC (Application-specific Integrated Chips) but I would personally be very leery of either of these types of cards operating power generation equipment where reliability should be of primary concern.

One of the advertisers here on control.com, Gas Turbine Controls, may have some used or new, old stock ISA bus ARCnet cards; you could contact them at www.gasturbinecontrols.com for availability and price.

If you want PCI bus ARCnet cards, those can be purchased from GE or one of their packagers, or from Contemporary Controls, Inc. (www.ccontrol.com/arccontrol).

And, in researching this response, I just noticed that CCI is now offering an ISA bus ARCnet card, but you should contact them for information to see if it's compatible with the driver used in IDOS (they may well know as they probably get a lot of requests for ISA bus ARCnet cards for older GE Mark V operator interfaces; I doubt GE would reply to a request about compatibility because they don't want to support older GE Mark V operator interfaces, but it might be worth a try).

So, you need to know what kind of card you want to buy: ISA- or PCI bus. And, then search appropriately.

Best of luck. If you find a source of ISA bus ARCnet cards compatible with IDOS and early GE Mark V HMIs, please write back to let us know. A lot of people would be very happy to learn about such a source.

 

Try to give me your email, I will help you to provide arcnet cards.
Thanks

 

We do not sell Mk V <I> ARCNet cards. However, we provide an operator interface to the Mk V - <ITC>. It is a direct replacement for the Mk V <I> that uses off-the-shelf ARCNet cards.

The <ITC> system utilizes state-of-the-art, off-the-shelf hardware/software technology to communicate directly to the Mk IV and MK V. The <ITC> system supports Stagelink communications utilizing a non-OEM proprietary ARCnet card and does not rely on, or use, DOS, IDos, Cimplicity, TCI, or CimBridge.

The <ITC> system capabilities include: Full monitoring and control, Complete Mk V Tools (Control Constant Modification, AutoCal, EEProm Utility, Logic Forcing, View Tools, Pre-Vote Display, Quick Sheet Display & Dynamic Real Time Rung Display), Unit-Specific data synchronization (no more sneaker net), Real-time and historical data trending, Automated reports, and More...

The <ITC> system also provides native protocol gateway communications via Modbus (Serial/TCPIP), Allen-Bradley CIP and DF1, GE FANUC Series 90, DDE, NetDDE, DirectNet, OSI PI, OPC (Server and Client), and many more.

For further details on the IBECS for Turbine Control <ITC> HMI, visit http:\\cse-eng-inc.com, http:\\info-itc.us or email [email protected]

 

Contact [email protected].
Alternately you can visit the website of HS electronics, Mumbai, India.

I heard that he is having refurbished ARCnet cards and also into IDOS machines for GE MarkV, MarkIV.

 

I would be very careful about using refurbished ARCNet cards - they may be the least of your worries. The ARCNet cards were very durable and probably out last the rest of the system. Who knows, your problem may not even be the ARCNet card. It could be just a connection or a cable.

The question you should be asking is "Do I want to continue on with old ISA 16 bit technology or do I want to trade in my tin can and string for new top shelf technology that can speak to my Mk V in its native language?" The only other option after that is to spend the equivalent to a small country's operating budget and upgrade to a whole new control system.

 

> Our company wants to buy 5 MK-V <I> ARCNET cards. Please help me with any contacts/suppliers??

please see our site www.hira.co.in
We have PCA198-CXB Card in Stock.
Thanks