1784-PCMK A or B?

[gking789 0]

I have a Dell laptop running Win 2000, and i need to connect to a SLc 5/04 on Dh+ is a 1784-PCMK the best way to connect? I have been connecting via a null modem cable and using the aic net driver in linx. It is very slow and I have to connect to a panelview the is on a Rio with this SLc. I have been doing too much driver and cable swapping. Also what is the difference between the A and B card? I need some help!! Thanks, Gabe.

[TechJunki 0]

Data highway is a much faster way then using the serial inerface, and is my best preference for use on a SLC. The difference between the A and the B card is the A card will only support data highway at 57.6K baud and the B card will support 57.6k and 230.4K Baud. Generally 57.6K is fast enough, especially if you consider the large price difference going to the B card. JJ

[mgvol 0]

The series A card was for PLC-2 and older PLC-5's and had a different cable connection on the card. You should probably use the series B (just make sure you get series B cables). If you buy a 1784-PCMC, it is the card with a cable/adapter kit. Is less expensive than buying piece/parts.

[Pallanon 0]

Is the speed difference the only major issues between the cards?... Honestly for price difference I would go with a ser A unless I am missing something. I am looking at purchasing one and was going to post a message but I see someone already did. All this is still kinda new to me, would the ser A card suite me for communicating with a slc 500 and maybe a plc 5. Thanks

[gravitar 3]

The DH+ speed difference is the main reason. But most DH+ networks I've encountered were set for 57.6K anyway so you really aren't giving up much. oh, and they added RIO scanner capability just incase you want to run a Soft PLC program on your notebook :) The other differences are the style of cable connector and the internal design of the card. As it was it was explained to me by A-B when they first released the series B, the series A follows the 8-bit PCMCIA standard only. The series B is a 16-bit "CardBus" card. In the late 90s, notebooks were coming out that didn't support the 8-bit cards. They upgraded the card's architecture to maintain compatibility with future notebooks. Now with that said, I've had very good luck getting series A cards to work with modern notebooks, using the 95/98 PnP driver. Back when you had to use the DOS Card & Socket services it was a different story.. It was a crapshoot whether it would work at all or not with just about every notebook that came out. Don't know much about 2K or XP.. I've had mixed results in NT 4.0, but that's more due to my lack of knowledge in NT probably. They work great with Panasonic CF25, 27, 71, and 72s.. (Can you tell I'm a bit partial to Panasonic Toughbooks?) My personal PII-333 CF27 (and my old CF25 too) have series A cards, and they do everything for me that a series B would. If it were me, I would look for a series A with cables on eBay. Try like hell to get the cables with it, because if you have to buy one from A-B they're going to cost you about $300/ea. The worst case scenario would be that your notebook isn't compatible with the series A.. Hopefully you'd be able to sell it for what you had into it! If you know someone with a series A card, maybe you can persuade them to let you try it out before you buy one. I've got kind of a funny story about PCMKs.. I was working for McNaughton-McKay in the 90s, and a big part of my job at the time was dealing with the PCMK cards. I was on the phone almost daily with Rockwell at the main and local offices for various reasons.. Mac & Mac was on a steady diet of PCMK cards and they knew I had my hands on most of them. Ok. So I get an angry call from a customer one day. He says "I just bought a cable for my PCMK card and it won't fit!! What kind of @#$%^& are you guys pulling?!" Now, I got calls all the time ranging from mildly naive to downright stoopid. I did the usual tech support thing and calmly tried to walk the guy through how to properly plug the cable into the card. After a few minutes of what the guy must have thought was belittlement, he got REALLY pissed off. He said he was coming down to the office and demanded to see me and my boss. Uhh..... OK. So when he got there, we asked to see his card and cable. WTF?!?!?!? Where did this bizarre thing come from?!?! Oh, wait a minute.. there's been a series change.. We seem to no longer have boxes labelled "Series A" anymore and now have "Series B". After cutting open a few more boxes, we came to a startling, VERY EMBARRASING conclusion.. ROCKWELL TOTALLY REDESIGNED THE CARDS AND CABLES, AND DIDN'T BREATHE A WORD OF IT TO US!!!!!

[Guest]

from gravitar: been there ... done that ... and here’s my favorite story about PCMKs ... a customer buys a new PCMK card/cable kit ... the kit comes with a small plastic part called a “wedge” which has one of those REALLY sticky tapes on the back ... the idea is that you’re supposed to permanently stick the wedge onto the lid of your laptop and use it as a strain-relief for the fragile cable-to-card connection ... a slot on the cable’s electronics pod (little gray box) mates with the wedge ... see page 7-2 in the 1784-PCMK User Manual you might also want to look at page 1-4 for some more information related to this thread ... anyway the technicians didn’t install the wedge ... a couple of days later the cable was connected to a PLC ... the laptop was placed on a nearby table ... someone working in the enclosure accidentally snagged the cable ... with no strain relief, the tiny connections on the end of the the $300 cable got torn up ... luckily the $1,200 card survived ... the technicians’ boss raised a stink because the wedge wasn’t properly used ... he bought a new cable and gave the technicians a spirited “use the #!@*!&! wedge from now on!” lecture ... a couple of days later the cable was again connected to a PLC ... again the laptop was placed on a nearby table ... again someone accidentally snagged the cable ... but this time, with the wedge strain relief properly in place, the connections on the cable and the card were protected ... unfortunately the whole $3,000 laptop got dragged off the table and disintegrated when it hit the floor ... one of those cases where sometimes the solution is worse than the problem? ... best regards, Ron

[Ghettofreeryder 0]

Man, thats hilarious, id hate to be those techs

[gravitar 3]

I was going to add a comment about that little dovetail slide, if noone else did. TAKE IT SERIOUSLY, USE IT!!! I've got two PCM4s with obliterated connectors from times that I was lazy and didn't anchor it down. Miraculously, I've been able to carefully dig the chunks out of the card both times, so the card has survived. You bring up another good point, you also have to consider what the cable is anchored to! Of course if you had a Panasonic you'd be more worried about chipping the concrete than damaging the notebook, but I guess I covered that elsewhere :) Does anyone know of a source for replacement PCMK/A connectors?