Problems with Horner GE and MAC SM128

[Chris Elston 78]

I've been in contact with Horner and MAC valves on this question. However I've failed to get the MAC valves to talk to my GE 90/30 Horner Profibus card. MAC says that depending on how many reciever modules are connected is how many btyes to configure in the Horner card. The MAC unit I am using is called a SM128 gateway. It connects to four other MAC manifolds to what MAC calls SM32 reciever modules. I have two manifolds connected to one gateway. Basically the SM32 reciever module is called a MAC connect network that talks to the SM128 Profibus Gateway. Each SM32 reciever uses 2 btyes input and 2 btyes ouput. So since I have 2 manifolds, that is 4 btyes input and 4 btyes output. I tried many different configurations in the Horner Profibus card for the MAC gateway unit. But I can't get my master card to talk to my slave unit. I have attached my program if anyone wants to take a crack at this. Has anyone used a Horner card and a MAC SM128 unit on profibus yet? I created a BACKUP folder of my VersaPro 2.04 program. m1241.zip

[Chris Elston 78]

Here is a document on the SM128 unit and SM32 recievers. Ui097_A.doc

[Steve Bailey 118]

Maybe the gateway needs to be configured as 8 bytes in and 8 bytes out even if you haven't connected manifolds to all four nodes? I'm just guessing since I've never worked with the Horner Profibus card or the MAC gateway. But I've worked with DeviceNet multi-point blocks and they had to be configured as if there were devices connected to every point.

[Chris Elston 78]

I got this working today. John from Horner (what a nice guy) called MAC and had a phone conference. Basically I called the dudes at MAC and they said I needed to configure this slave device in BYTES, but John at Horner said the GSD file said it should be talking in WORDS. Two different stories…..Anyway… So after they talked awhile, John told me to setup the MAC gateway like this: My node number for the MAC gateway was = NODE = 4. NODE 4, Module 1, I/O = type, WORD, 2 Since I only had two SM32 receivers, each receiver uses one word of input and one word of output. If you have four SM32 receivers, then you need to put WORD, 4 for the slave configuration. If you have three SM32 receivers, then you need to put WORD, 3. This is different than device net like you say. I am use to configuring the max I/O just as you said Steve, but in this case, you should not do that. Once that was loaded, it worked. One other problem I found just a for warning...the SM128 profibus gateway unit has a DB-9 connector on it. That connector is mounted on the INSIDE of the gateway housing. This causes the DB-9 to be exposed to the outside and appear “counter sunk”. What this does is cause a problem with your profibus cable not seating all the way down on the DB-9 connector located on the SM128 module. I had to cut the hood on my profibus cable to get it to sit all the way down on the SM128 gateway unit from MAC. I will post a review and some pictures about the problem I found. So I had two things against me, the configuration and the dumb DB-9 connector would not seat... Then I had an SM32 receiver freakout and blow a fuse, stick a solenoid in the “on” state that I was not telling to go on, so I swapped it out and now everything was working ok. Geez...what a mess... I hope it doesn't give me any more problems. I really like the system in conjunction with GE, just had some MAC problems.

[Chris Elston 78]

Here is one of the problems I had with the MAC SM128 Unit. http://www.mrplc.com/products/showproduct....7&cat=13&page=1