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Hi gang, I need a little bit of advice that's Off Topic, but this a good group to ask about industrial controls. I have a customer with a line which has 19 RS232 devices, some test instruments, others material handling devices. Currently we control everything from a NT4.0 box that has a 24 port serial card in it. The actual line is handled by an AB PLC5/40E, but we use a KTX card to get to the PLC via DH+. They are about to do a major product upgrade, and we need to add about a dozen serial devices, which blows the doors off the serial card. What I want to propose is converting all of the serial devices to TCP/IP and move everything to Ethernet. Besides cost, I also see that as a way to have a backup supervisory computer that doesn't require swapping a bunch of cables. The main has only failed once, but it takes a *LOT* of time to get switched over. I've seen a few serial to Ethernet convert modules on the web, but not many. I also see things like the ucsimm and TINI boards. I'm a little reluctant to use a "roll your own" solution like the TINI board because I don't have facilities to fab the finished units. (And we're trying to run a profitable business here.) The devices are not necessarily near each other, so something like a terminal server with lots of serial ports isn't really a good choice. Does anyone have any experience, or observations, about a good path to take here. Or should I just tell the customer to fork up the bucks for the extra serial ports. (In the overall cost of the plant upgrade the serial ports a cheap, but next year if you have to buy one in isolation it's REAL expensive.) Thanks, Michael -- Michael R. Batchelor - Industrial Informatics & Instrumentation, Inc. Linux is like a wigwam... No windows, no gates. Apache inside. _______________________________________________ LinuxPLC mailing list [email protected] http://linuxplc.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxplc