Dear all,
I'm a supporter of this forum for a long time and this is the first time I didn't find help in previous posts, that's why I ask you.
My customer has a quite old control architecture in the plant and we want to update it with the minimum budget needed. This is the architecture more or less:
-- We have two S5 PLCs with the 6GK11430TA01/02 CP cards and an S7 with a 6GK7 443-1EX11-0XE0 CP. All of them are in the same network and to this network we also have the supervision PCs.
-- We have two supervision PCs, and each of them with an Applicom card and its applicom opc server, and also Intouch 7 with it's OPC link. OS is Windows NT 4.
-- We also have a server with INSQL accessing to PLCs with another applicom via DDE (I guess). Also with WinNT 4.
-- All those equipments connected to an SSV104 multiplexer.
We cannot use another OS because there is another propietary application on the PCs that only works with NT4.
So our idea is to create virtual machines (with VMWare) for all computers, but in order to do this we need to change the communications though applicom cards, our idea is to use standard ethernet cards because they are the only ones supported by VMWare.
I guess that from the SW point of view we only need to substitute the opc server in the PCs. This opc would need to read from S5 and S7 and reside on WinNT. Do you know which could I use?? I've read that it is possible with Simatic NCM (aka SOFNET IE, maybe an old version supported by WinNT) is that true?? Is it compatible with Intouch 7?? I was also wondering if it would be possible to use the Applicom opc server with an starndard ethernet card but probably it won't...
From the HW point of view we would need to comunicate S5 in TCP/IP and remove the SSV 104 multiplexer. I have seen some adapters to connect in the S5 CP Sub-D connector and that converts to RJ45 TCP/IP.
We think that the first step is to know if its possible to comunicate S5 with the PCs through a standard ethernet card. I guess that if the S5 1430 TF CP is used with ISO transport protocol, I could use an standard converter from AUI connector to RJ45 and a standard ethernet card could be used in the PC. However if the S5 1430 TF CP is using the TF protocol this option is not possible and I only can use an applicom or CP1613 or similar in the PC. What do you think??
Other option is to replace the S5 1430 TF by the S5 1430 TCP, but in this case the same, the S5 1430 TF cannot be using the TF protocol because if it is the case I need to modify the PLC programs/blocks.
The problem is that I don't know how to see if the S5 1430 TF CP is configured in ISO protocol or in TF protocol. We cannot access CP configuration because we don't have the SW. I have both the S5 and S7 programs and may can I see it in some way????
This is all. I would appreciate any correction to my thoughts and any light to my doubts.
Many thanks in advance!
Sorry for so long Post.