90-70 Upload Corruption

[mlkramer]

I am new to the world of GE PLCs (my background is in Allen-Bradley) so bear with me... I have a 90-70 that was programmed using Logicmaster 90-70 software. I wanted to do some programming with it using Alstom's P80-Workbench (P80C), because I find the interface much easier then the DOS based stuff. Anyway, I opened/imported the LM equipment folder to get all the descriptors, and then uploaded the program from the PLC to make sure I had all the most recent logic. Upon making my changes and attempting to build the program it gave me some "topography" errors on rungs that I had never touched. I went through the entire program to see if there were any other inconsistincies with how the program should look and I found two rungs where some of the connections were not like they should have been. I "fixed" these problems and downloaded the program. After starting up the line, one of the rungs was behaving incorrectly where the output was turning on, seemingly without the input conditions to it being on (the programmer said my program was Equal and Online). I realized that it was behaving as if I hadn't "corrected" the rung, and it was certainly not behaving like it should have been based on what I saw on the screen. We re-downloaded the program with LM9070 using an earlier version of the logic (which looked identical for this rung) and everything ran fine. There were no conflicts with variables or anything like that with the logic I added and this rung. Has anybody run into problems like this while using P80 Workbench or 90-70's in general? Thanks...

[Steve Bailey]

Alstom offers some brand-labeled controllers built on the Series 90 platform, but I don't know whether they use GE Fanuc's firmware or something of their own design. If the latter, that could be the source of your troubles when trying to use the Alstom software to program a 90-70. There is newer software for the 90-70 available from GE Fanuc. It's called Proficy Machine Edition. Edited March 28, 2006 by Steve Bailey