FINS Gateway

[BobB 58]

In desparate trouble here. Have an old windows 95 machine and the hard drive carked it. Updating to Windows 98 SE. Customer has lost the original FINS Gateway disk. The versions that were supplied in CX-Programmer from V3 will not run on Windows 95 or 98 - some message about a file will not install because the unicode version will not run on Windows 95 - please install the correct version. I am in desparate need of an old DOS version (not quite as old as me) of FINS Gateway that will run on Windows 95 and 98. The card in the computer is an old ISA version of Controller Link. The firmware is V1. something. Can anyone post a suitable old version on an ftp site somewhere so I can download it please? Hopefully!!!! Hope I am not outside the bounds Chris. The customer did buy the card. I set up the original job and sold the thing to him. Edited 5 Jul 2005 by BobB

[PdL 71]

Hi there Bob Man I feel your pain.... Did an ISA board couple a years ago at a time the Citect FINS driver didn't yet support the FINS gateway version running for a PCI card. Eventually had to downgrade a win2k machine to Win95. Only thing I remember is that I couldn't get it running on 98 because ISA isn't PnP, the IRQ on the ISA board is set manually through the dipswitches, and 98 reserved those IRQ's and I couldn't assign it to the ISA board. I managed though in Win95. I have just turned our office upside down for those disks but I'm really sorry can't find them. Maybe the attatched manuals are of any help along the way. 3G8F5_CLK21_manuals.zip Edited 5 Jul 2005 by PdL

[Guest anonymous]

Hello Bob, Finsgateway v3 should run under Win98. (Running on my 98 PC even as I type). Was this a 'clean' installation of FGW? I.e. had FGW previously installed / uninstalled on the machine - this has been known to cause problems if the un-install fails for some reason, was it an over-install? Any more info may help me to point you in the right direction (if you can't get a download sorted!). Regards anonymous

[Guest Guest]

Yes FGW3 is runs on Win98, but from what I remember FGW3 does not support the ISA board anymore... You probably need V2. If you are running Citect on this machine there even was a dll released to run under this version of FGW, I will see If I can find that one. If you need to unistall you can find some removers here, I believe Jay put the remover for V3 up in the download section. Good luck.

[PdL 71]

OK scr*w the cookie cleaners. Not gonna use em anymore

[Sleepy Wombat 27]

What about your old mate Fox....Mabey the truth is out there.....

[PdL 71]

He's chasing Scully.

[Jay Anthony 118]

[Guest anonymous]

Way over my head...

[ChrisKozanecki 2]

X-Files?

[PdL 71]

Certainly not red shoes diaries but Bob where are ya so we can go on topic again

[BobB 58]

Chasing my tail as usual. Really very busy. Actually found the problem. I had installed FINS Gateway 2003 because I had it handy. Then uninstalled it as it is not suitable for Win 98. Even used regedit and deleted any reference to Omron, FINS, FGW etc etc in the registery. At the end of the day uninstall did not remove some dll files. Found an earlier version of FGW and installed it. It appears that the "unicode" version of the dll's will not run on Win 98. FGW 3 did not overwrite the dll's. Finally found the dll"s and deleted them. FGW 3 installed correctly and all was well. Only did that last night at about 11PM. Installed Citect. Restored the project. All working well until I go to the alarm page and Citect has a fatal error and shuts down. Have never seen this problem before. The Citect licence is out of support so I cannot get any help from them unless the client pays for support. His company will not. Here we go again. Cheapskate yank companies that get themselves into trouble - CEO has gone to gaol for being naughty. You know what I mean. Now they have no money for maintenance. I think the CEO took all the money with him. Appears as though there may be a hardware problem. Will have to see if I have an old hard drive somewhere and try that, or an old computer. They offered me a new XP box but the Controller Link card is ISA. No ISA slots these days, except in industrial type computers. Oh well, keep trying - VERY TRYING!!!

[ChrisKozanecki 2]

I thought XP would still recognise an ISA card, especially if you have driver disks?

[Jay Anthony 118]

[PdL 71]

Even though it recognises the ISA card, you can only choose through jumpers IRQ10,11,12,15 and have to select a limited memory base adress through dipswitches. The epxerience shows that these memory adress ranges are not reservable and are assgined automatically by XP, as well as the IRQ. Bob did you manage to set the IRQ and memory which complies with the board setting in Win98 ? Check them at your device manager and also check if the IRQ has a conflict at the administrative tools > system information. If its a problem go to Win95. Regarding Citect, this is the FINS driver that worked for me at that time. It comes with a separate FINS.dll which you have to replace with the one installed by the driver. Citect is a beauty of a SCADA program. The only big setback is you have to pay big time for support memberships not to talk about upgrading licenses... Good luck again. FINS_driver_V2.24__proper_dll.zip Edited 7 Jul 2005 by PdL

[BobB 58]

I have the Controller Link card working fine. That is no longer a problem, as I posted above. There are other problems now. The PC failed some time ago and someone else "fixed" it. I now have a problem with Citect shutting down when the alarm page is selected. I tried an earlier version of the project and it works just fine. There is a problem in the databases I think and will have to take the old version and type in lots of I/O to get the project to where it is today, without the errors. Funny thing is it compiles OK. Oh well, lot of typing to do. The sad thing is they did not keep up support so Citect will not help me. Cannot blame them. Further, it looks like the dongle is "dickie". Will contact Citect and see if they can test/sell me a new dongle. Never ending saga. Hope I get paid.

[PdL 71]

Don't have to tell you about incremental compile right !? P.S. Use Excel to edit the variable.dbf. Just keep adding the last tag till you got enough tag fields created, compile and copy the tags you want to add from the -not working- database and paste them in your "old" tag database. Saves a lot of typing and chance of making faults. Same goes for the alarms and trend tag databases. Check your dongle with CiuSafe.exe in the citect/bin folder. Check if your parallel port is set to ECP in the BIOS. If possible set it to 378H/IRQ7 and DMA 3. Edited 8 Jul 2005 by PdL

[BobB 58]

The next step. Only thing you have to really watch is that you do not change the size of the fields. It will not work. Made that mistake in the first Citect project I programmed many years ago. There have been some 20 or so since. Thank you all for help and suggestions. Confirmed the path I had taken and has certainly helped with the thought processes. Will post re the success, or otherwise, of the Excel excercise. Edited 9 Jul 2005 by BobB

[Jay Anthony 118]

[PdL 71]

You're right, it won't. But if you accidentally changed one after all, Citect will tell you the database field sizes are incorrect. Just got to the include project and open the database to check the column size, and correct your database. It its so much easier! But remember to first add the points as copies, and do a compile only then a unique tag number is assigned to the tag. If you don't and you just fill up the database all extra will be lost at the next compile. But I don't think I need to tell you this but perhaps other Citect users are reading along. Really surprised you managed to get the ISA board working on the 98 installation with only some software issues. Oh well maybe its because I had cursed the board for downgrading to win98, before I even installed it P.S. Ever noticed Omron is doing real smart getting rid of the ISA boards in the NS-CLK units ? Just made an adapter to fit the board and away they go. Edited 9 Jul 2005 by PdL

[Jay Anthony 118]

Never thought about it that way. I guess you're right.

[BobB 58]

Fair comment.

[PdL 71]

At the end of the branch yes, but we mostly have the cable layed as a ring and decide at the commissioning where to have the ends. Could prove to be handy if you have impendance problems with the cabling. Glad it all worked out ok, at least I assume

[BobB 58]

Yes thank you. It was just me being stupid an installing FGW 2003.