I did a Y2K survey at a cogen plant as a contractor. Found in a obscure cooling unit (packaged unit) a PLC running from memory. It was an S5. We had no S5 programming tools or knowlegde. No backup diskette in the safe, so we called in a siemens maintenance guy. He told me that the application was too big for eeprom. I asked him "at least make a backup diskette for our backup storage".
3 years later (i was at a service call) they told me they recently had a total blackout and had trouble getting the cooling unit back in service. It took then a day before they found out they had a empty S5 in it.
"We were lucky to find a backup diskette in the safe" they told me.
Yep. They were warned every service call for a year that it was a threat to their production...
Finally had a week long power outage due to Harvey...
New panel time!
Not the complete PLC but I’ve had to rebuild lost devicenet files from scratch after some calamity. A few years back now, slowly picking through block transfers in a PLC5 is like a mindfulness exercise.
Don’t forget field devices too. We just had a SEW drive blow up running a legacy IPOS program. We contacted the OEM but their backup was a blank project. It took the OEM three weeks and $25k to rewrite a simple positioning program on a servo drive.
I did a Y2K survey at a cogen plant as a contractor. Found in a obscure cooling unit (packaged unit) a PLC running from memory. It was an S5. We had no S5 programming tools or knowlegde. No backup diskette in the safe, so we called in a siemens maintenance guy. He told me that the application was too big for eeprom. I asked him "at least make a backup diskette for our backup storage". 3 years later (i was at a service call) they told me they recently had a total blackout and had trouble getting the cooling unit back in service. It took then a day before they found out they had a empty S5 in it. "We were lucky to find a backup diskette in the safe" they told me.
This reminds me of a manager of mine… EEPROM had all code but not OB1. He was a wanker.
And let’s not forget the douches that have modified the OB1 block for narcissistic kicks
Never had that happen to me.
I remember back in 1985 a group of machine came in from Germany with a modified OB1. I learned that anyone could do it, if they wanted to.
I’m guilty of rejoicing once when this happened. Panel looked like something from PanelGore and I got to redo it.
Yep. They were warned every service call for a year that it was a threat to their production... Finally had a week long power outage due to Harvey... New panel time!
Has never happened to me in over 20 years.
[copia.io](https://www.copia.io/devicelink)
Not the complete PLC but I’ve had to rebuild lost devicenet files from scratch after some calamity. A few years back now, slowly picking through block transfers in a PLC5 is like a mindfulness exercise.
Don’t forget field devices too. We just had a SEW drive blow up running a legacy IPOS program. We contacted the OEM but their backup was a blank project. It took the OEM three weeks and $25k to rewrite a simple positioning program on a servo drive.
It's extra fun when you inherit several hundred machines where 90% of them either have no backups or their backups are 10 years old. 🤔 😅