RickJames

I tried the firmware install and that didn't work either. I finally got the system back to a working state by installing the firmware image. Thanks for the response Sina.

I captured the boot data that comes out of the serial port on the Power Pmac. It looks like some files are missing and the kernel may be corrupted. Would you experts please take a look at it and advise? Thanks, Rick PPMac Capture 011113.TXT

I have a Power Pmac in a UMAC rack. It's had the problem of not booting all the way up to where the axis interface card lights light up. But a quick power cycle will usually get it into a completely running state. I upgraded the firmware to version 1.4.027 resently. The system booted up, I recompiled my project and it downloaded successfully. I tried to do another build and download but when I cycled power to clear the memory, the axis interface card lights come on for 5 seconds then drop out. If I pull the MACRO acc-5e card, then the axis control interface cards light up and stay lit. I talked to a friend who said there may be a problem with the cpu clocking on the Power Pmac. Or that the wait state may need to be increased becaus the CPU is faster than the backplane can handle. Any suggestions on debugging this? And where do I find the wait state (TURBO I37) on the Power Pmac? Is it Sys.BgSleepTime?

Let me start by saying that I inherited this problem from someone else and there is still alot about the MACRO devices I don't understand. Anyway, here is the problem. I have an ACC-5E MACRO card in a rack with a TURBO pmac and 3 ACC-24EA2 axis cards passing data to an ACC-5E MACRO card in another rack with a Power Pmac. Sometimes the positional data from the first axis card is not being updated on the Power Pmac side. The data from the second and third axis card, along with some other I/O data, are still being updated. Issuing a $$$ reset in the PWIN32Pro command window doesn't correct the problem. If I cycle power on the TURBO rack it will come up working sometimes, sometimes not. But once it is working it continues to work until the power is cycled again, or until the MACRO ring is broken and re-established (disconnect fiber optic cable). There is no macro error, so I'm assuming the MACRO is transferring whatever is left in the buffer, it just never changes. How do I verify that the positional data is getting from the axis card (which is always updating correctly) to the MACRO card for transfer? Where are the registers or buffers I need to look at? And also what is a good manual for this problem? I've looked throught the TURBO Pmac manual and looked at some of the variables it calls out, but didin't find what I needed. Thanks for the help and sorry for the long post.

Thank you Sina.

I know this is novice question, but I'm modifying someone elses code on a Power Pmac and I'm seeing conficts in how the = sign is used in a .PMC file. If it's a comparison like: if (Varname == 1) { Then it's the '=='. But what if it's and assignment like: varname = 1; or varname == 1; Which is correct? I see it done both ways in the file. Thanks for the help.

Thank you Richard. I've got the PVT crating a decent looking move profile now. But I still have one problem. If I'm at 25.4 mm/min and I want to ramp to 50.8 mm/min, the x axis speed drops to 0 for an instant then ramps up. I'm trying to blend from the previous linear move command to the PVT move command using the TA and TD commands. Is that the right approach? Thanks again.

I'm trying to create a linear accelleration move over time on the x axis. I used the formula time=DeltaP/((v1+v2)/2) I found in some PowerPmac documentation which calculates a 59000 ms move. I've tried using the PVT command but it accelerates to near the target speed, decelerates, then makes a jump to target speed at the end of the move segment. I want the speed to ramp from 25.4 mm/min to 127mm/min. PVT59000 x76.2:127 y150 v130 w130 X is the only thing indicating a positional change. I also tried to do something similar with the TA command. With it, the X axis had a constant speed of ~5 mm/min. TA59000 x76.2:127 y150 v130 w130 Any suggestions on what else I can try? Thank you for reading.

I issued this command "variablename,384" in the terminal window of the IDE. and this is the response time I got "Response 360 chars in 140 msec. So that is inline with what your getting from your IDE, and what i'm getting in my VB application. Unfortunately thats just not fast enough to meet the requirements of my project. I need to retrieve 2000 pieces of data in less that 100 msec. I'm investigating alternative methods. Thank you for the tests and the info.

I'm reading blocks of about 400 pointers(ptr) variables to memory locations and it's taking 150 milliseconds to get a response from the GetResponse method using the telnet protocol connection. If I double the number of variables requested, then it takes more than twice as long. As I remember, this was faster in the original beta version. If I read the sys data (sys.udata[]), then it takes 1/10th the time. I've been using an older version of the com library (1.0.3925.26557, dated 9-30-2010) that uses telnet protocol and is very slow. I was informed that there is a new version that uses SSH, doesn't have the telnet, and is much faster. I'd rather not waste any more time trying to solve a problem that might be solved with the correct version of the com library. Where can I get the latest version? Thanks, Rick

Scott, Here are the declaration, connection, set variable, and get variable code I'm using. Good luck. Rick ' This object delcaration is from the latest version of the Comlib, and is different than the original beta version. Public Shared objPPMacAxes As PowerPmacComLib.ISyncGpasciiCommunicationInterface ' This specifies the object as sycronous GPascii telnet connection. objPPMacAxes = PowerPmacComLib.Connect.CreateSyncGpascii(PowerPmacComLib.deviceProperties.ConnectionTypes.Telnet, objPPMacAxes) ' If the connection is good, this will return a true value mResult = objPPMacAxes.GPAscii2Connect(.PPMac_Address, 23, .PPMac_Login, .PPMac_Passwd) If Not mResult Then Throw New Exception("Could not connect to PowerPmac.") End If ' Set a variable on the power pmac. objPPMacAxes.GetResponse(VarName & "=" & Value, mResponse) ' if it worked, will return an empty string. If mResponse.Length > 0 Then Throw New Exception("The GetResponse method returned an error.") End If ' Retrieve a variable value, or just execute a command. objPPMacAxes.GetResponse(VarName, mResponse) If InStr(mResponse.ToUpper, "ERROR") > 0 Then Throw New Exception("The GetResponse method returned an error.") End If

[quote='shelinej' pid='1077' dateline='1295012428'] I am trying to do something like this and I can't get it to work either. Did you ever find a solution? [/quote] Right now there is not solution. The response I got form Delta Tau is that the server connection is still in beta and is not available in the Power Pmac firmware. The telnet connection however, does work and I am using it successfully. Get the latest versions of the comm library, IDE, and firmware as there are some important bug fixes in them. Notably the ability to do tru syncronous connections. The latest IDE has the addition of visual basic programming examples also. Here are the versons I have. Bradp should be able to tell you where to get them: IDE = v1.1.2.45 firmware = 1.2.1.128 PPmac Comm Lib = 1.0.3925.26557 (dated 9-30-2010) Hope this helps. And if you need code examples, send a reply and I'll do what I can. Rick

[quote='bradp' pid='957' dateline='1292613509'] We have a limit of 64 telnet connections. This could be changed if needed but are you trying to make this many connections? [/quote] No, Between 3 programmers, we're making less than 10 total. I noticed that if I ran my VB project I would get an error on one of the connections. But if I elinated an external connection from a different test application. Then the other VB project error went away. I verified it was the my code by forcing the error to relocate to other sections of code by changing the connection order. It just seemed like the limit was a lower number. I will have to do more tests. Thanks for the info. If you have any suggestions for verifying this, I'd appreciate it. Rick

I've created an HMI application in VB 2008 that connects with a Power Pmac using the ComLib. I'm creating multible connection objects on multiple HMI computers and if I run the multiple apps at the same time, then some connections fail. But individually they work ok. Is there a limit to the number of connection objects that I can create? We also have multiple developers writing code in the IDE. Does that effect the number of ComLib connection objects? Thanks, Rick

I believe the IDE and firmware are up to date. But the PPmacComLib is in question. Where can I get a new version of it?