Please can any one help me about the following problem.
Every about 20 days the HMI (PC) watch is delayed by 10 minutes, but the Mark V watch in the Cores R, S, T and C is correct.

 

In typical GE fashion, an "HMI" is not always an HMI.

Mark V turbine control systems were originally supplied with an operator interface called the <I>, which was an IBM-compatible PC running on a proprietary, command line-based, multi-taksing operating system called IDOS. This can loosely be called an "HMI" (Human Machine Interface) in a loose definition of the term.

Later in the production of the Mark V, GE switched to an operator interface which consisted of an IBM-compatible PC running the MS-Windows operating system and a program from GE-Fanuc called CIMPLICITY. And they called this the "HMI", and I prefer to call it the GE Mark V HMI to distinguish it from all the other HMIs out there. (GE has a real penchant for choosing extremely poor terms, names and descriptions for their hardware, software, and functions.)

Many people call <I>s "HMIs", and while it's not incorrect in the sense of the term HMI, it's incorrect in GE-speak.

But, we don't know enough about the operator interface you are referring to to help. Is it an <I> or an HMI?

What kind of issue is the time difference causing? (In other words, is it causing a problem with data being transmitted to another system?)

Does the operator interface have GE Mark V Time Synchronization (available with <I>s), or NTP (Network Time Protocol) time synchronization (available on GE Mark V HMIs)?

If the operator interface has a time synchronization card and capability, is it being used?

On GE Mark V HMIs, I believe that the time displayed on CIMPLICITY displays is the time from the Mark V, and while there is a chance that the PC's clock could be different from the Mark V's, it's not generally a problem.

Why is all this important? Because <I>s have a known issue with time "synchronization", because <I>s have three "clocks". That's right. Not one; not two; but three.

The first clock is the PC's BIOS clock.

The second is an IDOS clock (running when IDOS is running and which gets its "starting" time from the PC BIOS clock when IDOS starts or when the time is set using the command line TIME command).

The third "clock" is the display of the time that is currently running in the Mark V.

The only way to see the PC's BIOS clock time is to go to a command prompt and type TIME and press ENTER. It just runs "in the background".

The way to see the IDOS time is to go to a display like the Main Menu and the time in the upper right corner should be displayed in cyan (light blue), and that time is the IDOS clock's time. This is the time that "drifts" the most.

The way to see the Mark V time is to go to most any display with Mark V data values on it (like the Main Display) and the time in the upper right corner should be displayed in white. That is the time coming from the Mark V.

A difference in the time on the <I> (the IDOS time or the PC's BIOS time) and the time on the Mark V will not adversely affect the operation of the Mark V or the turbine and auxiliaries it is controlling.

The time coming from the Mark V should be the time that all alarms and events are tagged with. So, a difference in the times of IDOS and the Mark V should not adversely affect the Alarm Logger and the Alarm Display.

I believe that if the Mark V system, through the <I>, communicates with another control system via GSM, or if Short Term Trending or Real Time Plotting is used that the time reported by the <I> can be different than the time reported by the Mark V if the IDOS time differs from the Mark V time.

GE did sell a time synchronization card and did provide software in the <I> that allowed the Mark V to be synchronized to a 'master clock' like an IRIG or GPS device or from a plant DCS which could send time synch signals to other devices over a separate network. But, I don't recall if this signal was used by IDOS to synchronize the <I> time to the master clock and keep it in synch with the Mark V.

 

In reply to CSA: Another unfortunate name that GE decided to use was to call their older operator interface an I enclosed with angle brackets. That is also the same as the HTML mark-up tag which requests an italic font.

When you use that code in a message, anyone trying to follow the conversation via e-mail has no idea what you are talking about because any HTML gets stripped out and all they see is a blank space. Sometimes the sanitizing routines will chop off the message right in the middle if they don't think they can find the end of the tag.

There are HTML codes to escape this (which allows a web page to display that character sequence), but the forum software simply converts those to angle brackets again, so there is no solution there.

I don't have a good answer as to what you can do about that, but I thought that anyone trying to follow this should be aware of it. There really isn't anything that Control.com can do about this, as they allow HTML codes in posts to allow you to do things like <i>italics</i> and <b>bold</b>, while for e-mail they need to support plain text (for maximum compatibility). Some other newer forums use a special non-HTML syntax for this, but I don't think that Control.com could switch to that easily at this point because of the very long existing history of messages in their database.

 

Yes, that is unfortunate. Actually GE used the angle brackets to denote hardware as opposed to software when the first starting producing microprocessor-based controls. They continue that today. And that was long before email and HTML.

It's likely they wish they hadn't done that now, but back then it made some sense. Still does, except for the HTML aspect.

I still use it because it's what's used in all the manuals and documentation and I don't want to confuse me ("I") with the operator interface ("<I>") nor do I want to try to introduce any terms which can't be found in the manuals. I try very hard to point people to manuals and documentation when the answers to their questions can be found there.

I'm going to continue to use them, again, because it's used in all the documentation that people should have from GE.

We'll just have to hope that people will choose to go to control.com to view any passages or terms that they find puzzling when trying to read them in an email of a posting.

 

The time in the right corner of the Master_Control_Unit screen is displaying the same time of the HMI and not the time of the core C

 

Best of luck with your problem!