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Vintage Allen-Bradley Cardlock

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About 9 years ago, I replaced an A-B Cardlock controller with a ControlLogix PLC. Cardlock was an early controller with cards containing various kinds of logic gates, timers, counters, etc. that were wire wrapped together to create control logic. I think the original drawings for the machine I worked on were dated in the mid 70's. Anyway, it worked when removed and I'm interested in hooking it up as a display piece in my office. Does anybody out there have any information on these units? I 'm curious when they were originally sold. 60's? 70's? Google search turned up very little. Has anybody else worked on these, or know anything about them?

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Back in the late 1970s, the company I was working for purchased several custom control systems from AB's engineered drives group. The first one of these had a cardlock. All subsequent ones had a PLC. The AB engineer for the project told me that they would rather have used a PLC on the first one, but they weren't sure they could get one in time to meet the delivery committment. I have a group photo around the first machine dated January 1980. By that time the second and third systems were already on order. That gives you and idea of the time frame for the end of cardlock. Maybe someone else can provide details about its beginning. Fortunately, I didn't need to make too many "edits" to the cardlock "program". That involved rewiring the connections to the logic gate cards. Fairly easy if you all you needed to do was add another connection to a four-input OR gate, but tougher to add an additional AND gate into the logic. Plus Murphy's law dictated that the wire you needed to move was at the bottom of the post so you had to remove and replace several wires in order to relocate one. The only advantage over hardwired bulletin 700 relay logic was less space and solid-state switching. In fact, there were still a lot of bulletin 700 relays. They only used the cardlock for circuits that needed to switch at higher frequencies or duty cycles. Incidentally, the PLC was simply PLC. Not PLC2, not PLC3 or PLC5, just PLC. Separate power supply the size of a small suitcase. Processor rack with a half dozen individual modules. Program backup using a STR-LNK tape cassette unit in a snazzy brushed aluminum carrying case. Serial communications between the STR-LNK and the PLC at a blazing 1200 baud. Edited by Steve Bailey

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I got some Cardlock from one if the oldtimers at a shop I worked for. I have some of he manuals. If you tell me what models I will see what I can find. There is only a page or two for each card.

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I rummaged around my files and found quite a few data sheets myself. The part numbers are all 1720-xxxxx and the documentation is dated 1971-76. Looks like inputs and outputs were 120 vac and internal logic is 15 vdc.

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I would guess that one good thing about cardlock was that it very fast. I remember using data cartridges for PLC2 program backups. Anybody remember using a CRT terminal to do instruction/rung comments on a PDP or VAX minicomputer?

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