Ok, here's one that has me stumped. I was brought over to a panel on a stamping press that looks like it took a direct hit from a scud missile. The door was apparently ripped completely off the hinges and twisted up like a pretzel. Luckily the panelview and other controls were on the far side, so they didn't take the full force of the hit. but, because of the formerly flat surface now being rather undulated, the mounting bezel couldn't take it and broke off.
It was put back together, more or less, when I got there. All broken wires taped up, door welded/bolted back to the hinge enough to keep it off the floor, and (picture this now) they drilled through the panelviews bezel and back housing, and ran threaded rods all the way through it in each corner to keep it together.
AND IT STILL WORKS!!
Well sort of. It is displaying data like it it supposed to. The keypad buttons work somewhat. It is actually communicating to the SLC, green comm light and everything. Apparently it "flaked out" a couple times and displayed scrambled data, but it cleared up each time after a sharp thump from a closed fist :) Obviously though, we need to replace it, so they wanted me to back up the program. No problem I thought, a few minutes and my trusty flash card and I'd look like a genius. Went into the config screen.. inserted card.. Hmm, says "Unformatted card". Well, whatever, there's nothing too important on there anyway. Tried to format.. wouldn't do it. wierd.
Ok, so I guess i need to start up the notebook after all. Fired up linx, hooked up the PIC, went to the who screen.. Nothing! No nodes found. Nevermind that the SLC and panelview are chatting merrily away in the meantime! OK, real wierd. Plugged the PIC directly into the SLC's chan. 1 just to test my sanity... Whew, it sees it. Plug back into the panelview, nothing. No obvious comms setting conflicts. computer and cable look fine. WTF?!?! I tried the flashcard one last time, after formatting it on the computer. Once again it knows SOMETHING is there, it just won't agree with me that it is a working memory card.
This is a 2711-K5A3, with DH485 main comms and the somewhat useless serial port. It is talking to chan. 1 of a SLC 5/03 through a C10 cable. I'm thinking maybe as one last possibility, I'll try using a cable with the fat AMP connectors on each end between the PIC and the port on the panelview that accepts it, rather than the standard C10 with an AMP on the PIC end and an RJ45 on the other. We use those cables for our Medar weld timers. My reasoning is, I know that one of the ports is functional, the proof is the SLC comms. Maybe I can get lucky and communicate to it through THAT port! If not.. I guess I'll have to take my chances with the old motherboard in a new housing, or find someone to directly extract the data from the FLASH chips!
I think I know the answer to this, but you can't pass-thru from channel 0 to channel 1 on the SLC, can you? That would be another thought..