E900 Grief

[Colin Carpenter 10]

One of my customers asked me to upgrade the firmware on a second hand E900 that he had bought, so that it could be used as a standby spare for the several others he has on site. No problem says I ..... firmware version was oldish, so download the latest firmware version from Beijers, set up HMI tools and off we go. Well, that is, we don't. You see, HMI Tools is telling me that the E900 (buttons and all) is a E910 (the touchscreen version) so it refuses to load the firmware. Eventually, of course, I do the stupid thing and think that if it says it's an E910, then it must be an E910 ..... (maybe a sexy version with touch screen as well as buttons), so I pick the latest version of the E910 firmware and download to the terminal. HMI Tools is happy as Larry, 'cos it's downloading E910 firmware to a E910 terminal. The sun is shining, the birds are singing ....... And then it boots ... and it boots up as a E910, and says please touch the screen to calibrate me, so I do, but it's not a touch screen .... and now the buttons don't work .... and now I'm starting to feel a little unwell 'cos I've just wrecked my customer's nice second hand screen that he's so proud of ... So where do we go from here ... luckily the screen is still acknowledging HMI Tools System Loader trying to make communications, which is just as well, because the buttons don't work remember, so the normal E-Terminal trick of holding down two keys while switching on won't work ... because it thinks it's a touch screen. If I try and download a proper firmware version for the E900, it just refuses ..... because it thinks it's a E910!! In desperation, I look at the "almost defunct" E-Terminals site, but no joy, so I end up looking at the Swedish Beijers Electronics site, search on E900 and find a Swedish article that seems to suggest (I'm not that good at Swedish and nor is Babel Fish) that if I use an older version of the firmware then I might get lucky. Can't find the version on the web site, but get lucky and find an old v1.01 version on my hard drive. Try and download it .... terminal says it's a E910 .... but it just doesn't care and goes on and downloads it any way. Erases the flash, transfers the firmware, re-boots as an E900 and suddenly I've got a fully functioning E900 back again!!!!! I just wasted 5 hours of my life. Why, oh why, oh why do I do this job?

[Nathan 7]

Lol, I've felt similar pain before.

[Crossbow 296]

I had a similar problem with an E150ET (which is the E150 with built in Ethernet). It refused to upgrade the E150ET firmware, kept saying it was an E150. Then one day I power it up and the screen reads E150 v4.01 not E150ET v4.01 like it used to. And now I can't communicate to it to use HMI Tools. It was an odd issue, and the resolution was to throw it out. I replaced with E410S which is small touch screen and fits same mounting hole. Much nicer than text display. But I was sure frosted when it screwed up for no apparent reason when it never took the OS update. Oh well, Beijers has some odd issues once in a while. Personally I'm using more GOT1000 units and less E-terminals.

[Nathan 7]

I'm all about going with NEMA 4X rated industrial touch computers or using standard PCs with Industrial touch LCDs. I personally like Hope Industrial displays. It's so much cheaper, easier, and more powerful. Haven't dealt with the Mitsubishis though. How are they? I have lots of stories about AB panelviews, especially the newer ones Edited 1 Nov 2006 by Nathan

[Goody 5]

Oh you gave me a shudder that I had long forgotten about. I once tried to upgrade the firmware on a (I think) E300. I uploaded the wrong one and it never booted again - ever. The screen light came on but the screen was blank and it would do nothing. Luckily the engineer at this site is a good friend and we lost it by saying it was faulty. I think it is still 10mm in dust at the back of there stores somewhere. ughhhh shudder

[Colin Carpenter 10]

Seems like I'm not the only one to do such a thing .... makes me feel a little better As a follow up, I received an E-Mail from HMI tech support at Beijers, and he confirmed that Boot Versions 4.0, and 4.01 on E900s were wrongly programmed at source so that they identified themselves as E910. This meant that the checks built into later versions of HMI Tools (which prevented downloading incorrect files to the wrong terminals) cause a problem with this particular version of the E900, as you could not upgrade the firmware without running into the problems I did. The problem was fixed in V4.03 and the terminal correctly identifies itself. He sent me an old version of "Sysload", which should enable downloading of later firmware as it does not check the terminal type before sending, but at the moment it won't run as it tells me that I'm missing an OCX file for some reason. Will let you know how it pans out. Apparently Mitsubishi should be able to "burn" new firmware EEPROMS in the event of this problem arising. Hmmmmm..........

[BobLfoot 302]

And not only in the Mitsi world. Con't every try and flash an AB CotnrolLogix with a serial cable from a laptop on battery power or with the screensaver turned on. You could wind up holding the most expensive hunk of silicon known to man.

[Colin Carpenter 10]

Success I'm now the proud owner? of a E900 which knows that it's a E900 and is programmed with the latest V6.1 firmware. The sun is shining and the birds are singing. My thanks to the lad at Beijers Tech Support who took the time and trouble to send me the right software to enable the resurrection from the the dead of the E900. Trick is you need HMI Tools V1.1 which doesn't check the compatability of the terminal and the firmware, and let's you send it anyway. Regarding those Control Logix CPUs, I successfully downloaded new firmware to one of those once, and it took a long time. More stressful than pacing the corridor of a maternity ward in my experience. I remember pointing at the Control Logix rack and telling everyone that the CPU cost more than my car .... and the whole rack cost more than a new car. Oh, and if you ugrade the programming software, you can't run more than one software version on one partition ..... and it's not backwards compatable ... which means another stomach churning 40 minutes or so.

[Amr Taha 0]

I know the topic is very old but I'm facing a similar problem with an old E900. My problem is more sever since I even don't have HMI tools and the system loader. I only have E-Designer V7.01 installed. I downloaded the binary file of the operating system from Mitsubishi website but can't figure out how to program it into the terminal. I appreciate if some body can send me the system loader software.

[Crossbow 296]

It's a free download at Mitsubishi's US website. Or was last time I looked.