AB SLC/505 and Solaris?

Question

I'm developing a fairly straightforward integration between an WMS running under Sun Solaris 8 and a single AB SLC/505 PLC via Ethernet. A few divert commands with confirmation - about 9000 of these per day max. Is Rockwell's INTERCHANGE the best way to do this (with no PC in between)? It looks like a straightforward enough C API. Does anyone have any experience with INTERCHANGE and is it currently maintained (the docs on AB site look about 4 years old!).

Any other suggestions appreciated. TIA, Bob

David Beck · Accepted Answer

Maybe the sourceforge project ABEL (Allen Bradley Ethernet Library) will help,  Description:This is a library and example programs for accessing an Allen Bradley PLC5 from Linux over Ethernet. This library supports the PLC5 family, the Pyramid Integrator, and the SLC 5/05 to various degrees. Example programs included to show how to use the lib.Bob O'C

Bob O'Connor · Answer

Thanks for the tip - this project looks like it never got started and maybeis as old as the INTERCHANGE docs I see! Seriously, am I barking up thewrong tree here (SLC to Solaris) or should I stick with a PC basedmiddleware? I'm a UNIX type and the application will run entirely on Solarisso I don't want to introduce another platform if I don't have to...Bob

Antti JÃ¤rvinen · Answer

To my understanding this ABEL does work but I have no idea how difficult it would be to port it to solaris .. most likely it won't work out-of-the-box but if AB uses tcp/ip and not something like raw ethernet frames like some do to do its business, porting wouldn't be too hard..

BUT, I've not tried this ABEL myself. Just heard.

-- Antti

Hugh Jack · Answer

The ABEL stuff was developed (by Ron Gage) to run under linux and should be basically compatible with Solaris. The only problem I have ever had moving TCP/IP stuff back and forth between Sun/Linux has been the byte ordering of IP addresses.

Antti Järv>

AB SLC/505 and Solaris?

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