I have a client that is having a problem with a SNAP-PAC-R1 in a 12 Slot rack. They were running the machine and all of a sudden all the outputs quit working. The output cards are SNAP-OAC5 (total of 4). It’s weird because one of the outputs is turned on and off by two separate buttons in PAC Display. One button sets the state and the other button clears the state. Would this still work even if there wasn’t a chart running? Anyone seen this before?
STAT light is solid green. Fuses are good. They already swapped out the rack/base.
They told me they had 5 vdc. Don’t know if it is exactly 5.1 (i’ll find out). This system is using the 5VDC Power Supply from Opto 22. This system is about 6 years old.
Ive had the something similar happen, it was random and intermittent. Checked the Arcnet Reconfig count and it was rather high, turns out I had a bum module. Perhaps that worth a look into.
Arcnet Reconfigs Detected and Initiated by I/O unit are both 0. However, when we look at the cards in each slot (“Digital Point” Button). It doesn’t know what I/O cards are in Slot 4 on up. Would you assume something is wrong with the card in slot 4? They confirmed they swapped out the rack with a new one. Maybe some incompatible hardware?
Do you have just the one controller taking to this rack?
That sort of module mismatch (it not knowing 4 and up) comes about when you have 2 controllers talking to the same I/O rack. (And one of them has the wrong config for that I/O rack).
You can use PAC Manager to check the configuration of the digital points.
Tools > Inspect > Point Config. If the digital output points indicate they are inputs, that would explain why writing to those points has no effect.
4-channel digital modules don’t use Arcnet, so the Arcnet reconfigs aren’t relevant.
Is there a strategy installed and running on the R1 controller? If so, are there any errors in the controller’s message queue? You can check by using PAC Control debug mode or by using PAC Terminal.
PAC Display can write directly to the outputs. However, if there is a strategy running and if the strategy is writing to those points, it could conflict with what PAC Display is sending.
You can diagnose further using PAC Control debug mode.
Thank you for all the posts. We went to PAC Manager and did notice the output slots are still configured as Inputs. Which we assumed the strategy was lost or simply not running. Although the client told us the STAT Light was green, it was not the case. That LED light can be very tricky at times if you aren’t looking at it head on.
That said, we went to PAC Terminal and viewed the status of the brain and sure enough the strategy was not running and the Autorun flag was disabled. Hearing from tech support that a low battery can be the culprit. It still doesn’t make much sense because they were in the middle of an “Autocycle” on the machine when it just quit. Everything seems to be just fine now, but can this happen any other way than the battery being low?
Anyways, thanks for all the help guys.
Dan
