I have a Cimplicity HMI for a Mark-v GT control
with single unit. During continuous printing from the alarm printer (Dot Matrix) the cimplicity screen freezing is taking place. Once printing stops cimplicity gets normalized. Kindly help me out of this problem.

Thnx.

 

That would be normal for slave printing. Is this a serial setup?

Regards
cww

 

Printer is connected to parallel port.
It's a OKIDATA Printer.

 

Printing from a GE Mk V HMI is one of the really kludgey features of the GE Mk V HMI. The PCs usually were not properly configured for printing from "the factory" and were quite often improperly configured by the commissioning/start-up engineers since there was never any proper instructions for configuring the dot matrix printer, cometimes referred to in Mk V documentation as the "Alarm Logger." They have even been found to be re-configured by site personnel--usually improperly, as well....

IN GENERAL, the parallel-port dot matrix printers provided with GE Mk V HMIs were intended to be printed TO using the TCI (Turbine Control Interface) printer "driver"--NOT the CIMPLICITY printer "driver." (TCI is the background service which uses the ARCnet card to communicate with the Mk V(s) and to pass data through CIMBRIDGE to CIMPLICITY--just another of the kludgey features of the GE Mk V HMI.!.!.!) Since TCI is primarily responsible for the StageLink (ARCnet-style LAN) communications and the Process- and Diagnostic Alarms, as well as the Contact Input Change Detect- and CSP (Control Sequence Program) logic Event event messages, TCI should almost ALWAYS be used to print Mk V-related alarms and events. (The exception is where a GE-Fanuc PLC-based "DCS", sometimes referred to as ICS (Integrated Control System) was provided in addition to the turbine-generator control system(s)--when CIMPLICITY MUST be used to print the ICS-related alarms.)

Usually the easiest way to tell if the TCI or the CIMPLICITY printer "drivers" were used is by looking at the font used by the printer. TCI just sends ASCII characters to the printer, and the printer uses the font selected from the printer's front panel to print the information. (In order to properly display Mk V alarms and events on a single line on the dot matrix printer, the printer should be set to 17 characters-per-inch, usually draft mode (for fastest printing), and a serif font (such as Courier) should be selected from the front panel--which can be a whole 'nother programming experience to figure out how to program the printer!).)

If a MS-Windows font, like Arial (which is a san serif font), in an odd pitch (like 10 or 12 pt) is being used by the printer, then the CIMPLICITY printer "driver" has been configured as the Alarm Printer.

Another, more difficult way to tell, is to check the CIMPLICITY printer set-up to determine if it's been configured (instead of the TCI printer).... Different versions of CIMPLICITY had different methods for configuring the printer....so you're on your own for this method.

You state that during "continuous" printing the CIMPLICITY displays freeze. Is this during a lot of alarms (such as during a turbine trip), or ??? Are you printing CIMPLICITY screens using the Ctrl+P hotkey shortcut very quickly--causing the print spooler to queue up and take a lot of CPU time? Have you changed the default print spooler settings (from 'background' to print directly to printer') and used more CPP time?

There's just so many things that can be wrong; even the printer configuration might be improperly set (such as for "quiet" printing, which usually requires at least twice as much time to print a similar amount of information as when "quite" mode is not enabled"), or the character set could be set incorrectly, or the wrong printer driver could be selected in MS-Windows for the Alarm Printer (GE provided Okidatas for a while, then Panasonic, and even Epsons--to be properly compatible any dot matrix printer should be set for Epson LQ-compatible mode--search control.com for more information Mk V dot matrix printer set-ups).

Best to make a list of all the possible issues and then start at the top and check each one off until you find the problem. One problem you won't be able to easily solve is older, slower CPUs--especially if you're trying to print displays very quickly...

If you're trying to print the CSP on the dot matrix printer--DON'T! It's horrifically slow, you usually go through a couple of printer ribbons and if you're trying to do it while the unit is running and to control the unit--well, it will be interspersed with all kinds of alarms and events!

If you're trying to print CIMPLICITY displays just to capture the data available on them, it is suggested that you configure User Defined Displays with the desired information and print them instead--they take much less time and don't waste nearly as much ribbon! But, the TCI printer "driver" MUST be used for this to work properly!

markvguy

 

Thnx for ur advice....ive checked the printer configuration and found the printing option as
"Print directly to printer" Is this the culprit.

Plz advise.

 

If you check the printer configurations of most PCs running MS-Windows, you will likely find that "background" (spooling) printing is the most common selection, and, usually the default value supplied with most printer configuration setups.

It shouldn't hurt anything to try changing the setting to spool from direct. If it doesn't work you can always set it back to direct and continue with the troubleshooting.

Let us know how it works!

markvguy

 

Spooling print jobs to a file is a standard technique with computers, and goes back a long ways. Even something as primitive as MS-DOS had a background print spooling function, but like many MS-DOS features it worked so poorly that virtually nobody used it (most better word processors had their own print spooler built in).

I haven't looked at dot matrix printers in years, but the popular models used to have print buffers built in. They usually came with a minimal buffer, but many of them allowed you to change a static RAM chip inside them to upgrade the size of the buffer. If your print job would fit in the printer's buffer, your computer wouldn't "hang" waiting for the printer to finish. It may be worth looking in the printer manual to see what can be done.

 

Spooling is usually the default option selected when a printer is added using the 'Add Printer' wizard under MS-Windows.

However, many people, when configuring Alarm Printers for GE Mark V HMIs improperly changed a lot of settings--because there were no decent instructions on how to set up the Alarm Printer on a GE Mark V HMI.

Hopefully the originator will write back to let us know if his problem was resolved!

markvguy