Windows NT/Festo Pofibus (Bus Error) Help

[Stuart_Wales 5]

We have an old machine which is tempremental to say the least. In a nustshell, she powers up as normal when a PC monitor loads your usual boot up with a 'windows NT' screen. We have very little experience around this software, we're simple HMI/PLC lads. Anyway, the PC loads up and we get your bog standard windows screen. From there, we have a few shortcuts to select for our machine. The machine is a base machine with 3 pallets that interchange depending on product. So with X pallet in machine and X program selected, you usually open a command prompt type dos screen with (what im guessing) is c programming. Once the program loads (we sometimes have to have several attempts for a program to load) you then get your typical HMI type set up with usual pages etc. Like a SCADA set up. Sorry if its vague till now, but I hope you're still with me! Anyway, all the sensors/pneumatic valves are on a profibus type network. Again, pretty unique on our site. Very frequent, we get a 'bus error' on the festo i/o blocks. Without a drawing, any software to connect, and little knowledge of the screen, how could we troubleshoot these 'bus errors'? (We have obtained this machine as a result of another facility going into receivership and are now ready to invest on either an improvement on equipment or software to help us troubleshoot) Screenshots etc will follow. Any help at the moment will be great (references to reading materials etc). Thank you.

[MrAutomation 20]

When a motor burns out, you replace it. If a mechanical part wears, you replace it. When your control system gets old an fickle... you just keep fiddling with it and hope to get it working. This, unfortunately, is all too common with control systems. They get old, but people keep using them. The worst part is that you are using custom built software, and you have no means to support it. There are different "risk factors" for different components of a system, and right now, the risk factor for your computer is through the roof! You might be able to continue to fight with it and get it working, but when your company is relying on a temperamental old, unsupportable, Windows NT based computer to run, it's time to consider weighing the risks versus gains of a control system upgrade. One day, this old computer will fail. Will you be ready? I know this isn't the answer you're looking for. You're getting intermittent errors on networked IO blocks. This means one of three things: - Intermittent physical problems (old wiring) - Intermittent hardware problems (old IO blocks) - Intermittent software problems (old computer) Do an upgrade. Try and convince the management that if they don't invest in an upgrade, it will fail. Until then, I would start by double checking ALL your wiring for loose connections, broken wires etc. I would then consider replacing the IO blocks, if the problem is isolated to a single component. Lastly, there's the computer thing. But that's a whole system upgrade, most likely. Best of luck.