Greetings to everyone out there. I have very little experience in control systems and Mark V. I work as a contract staff in a power station in Nigeria where a major inspection and maintenance is been carried out on some of their units. The units in the power station have their HMI which were supplied long ago, in the 90's precisely, and are obsolete and in need of change. They have hardware specifications of Pentium II with hard disk of 3Gb and use arcnet cards for interface with Mark V. The operating system run by the systems are DOS. I want to know if these computers can be replaced with more recent ones (maybe Pentium IV systems) without facing problems and if they are to be changed what hardware requirements should i take into consideration.
Thanks
Rukevwe Efekemo ([email protected])

 

Greetings,

The operator interfaces you are referring to are called <I> operator interfaces, not HMIs. (GE Mark V HMIs run MS-Windows and a program called CIMPLICITY.)

This is not easy, but it has been done. This topic has been covered several times here on control.com; use the Search feature at the far right of the control.com menu bar (after you read the Help for Search).

The problems are thus:

1) The ARCNet cards in the <I>s you have now connect to the motherboard via legacy ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) bus. These cards are NOT available in the marketplace, except from third-party vendors who have some used cards and some new, old stock cards--but they ain't cheap.

2) Most new Pentium motherboards do NOT have ISA bus slots.

3) Many BIOS chipsets on most new Pentium motherboards do not support DOS, or, in the case of Mark V <I>s: IDOS.

Having said all of the above, a couple of posters to control.com have managed to get a P4 motherboard-based CPU up and running IDOS. But, they have never provided any of the details. Others have tried in vain and gotten very frustrated. You may have to change interrupts to get the ARCnet card to be recognized, and there's serial ports vs. PS2 ports, and IDOS does NOT recognize USB.

If you want to tackle this (and I don't recommend you do), I would suggest looking around for an "industrial" CPU in a 19-inch rackmount case with a single-board CPU and a slotted "bus" board with ISA slots.

But, even if you find such a CPU with ISA-bus slots, you are not guaranteed the BIOS chipset will be compatible with IDOS. IDOS, which takes over the CPU during boot-up of the <I> and then schedules MS-DOS as a task, was written for very specific BIOses, and they aren't available in the market any longer.

It's a pretty sure bet you may spend a lot of time trying to make something work that will not, but you won't know until you try.

And in the end, you will be left with a very questionable link in the chain: the ISA-bus ARCnet cards. When they fail, you may not be able to find any or wish to pay what they're being sold for.

Of course, GE sells HMIs running the latest version of MS-Windows and CIMPLICITY (or Proficy as it's called these days), but they usually require you to upgrade Mark V PROMsets and that can be problematic in itself. But, they are the OEM, and they do make it work.

Other companies have posted to control.com about <I> replacements. I don't know if CSE Engineering, Inc., sells their IBECS ITC overseas or not. Global Controls has also made mention of a MS-Windows-based <I> replacement that runs CIMPLICITY.

 

Hi,

this is a question that I think you can find some other information on the forum, try the "search" function.

The simple answer to your question is, it is not as simple as it looks. First problem is the Arcnet card, I don't know what Arcnet card you have but it needs to fit in the new computer. Arcnet cards for modern computers are just about impossible to find. The second problem is getting a motherboard that is compatible with the IDOS software that is used in the MKV system. I've done it before and managed to get some Compaq Pentium I machines to work.It is a bit of a hit and a miss whether it will work. I would suggest that your company wants to look at replacing the complete computer either with a GE HMI or one of the retro-fittable products available on the market. I can send you some information on retro-fits if you want to drop me an Email on [email protected]

 

Just for your info CSE, CSA fitted three of their retrofits for me in West Australia around three/four years ago and they are still running perfectly.

 

http://www.ccontrols.com/arccontrol/nims.htm

 

I believe the ARCnet driver for IDOS does not work with the ARCnet chip on this card. Unless something has changed very recently.

If someone has experience with this particular card with the COM20020 chip with IDOS, please share it with us. Also, please provide the CPU manufacturer and configuration details (microprocesor manufacturer; BIOS chipset manufacturer and version; ARCNET.DAT configuration settings).

 

BNF Technology has perfect solution for you. Please visit

http://www.slideshare.net/bnftech/arides-for-lti-station-replacement-upgradation-of-ge-mark-v