Many sellers (not just eBay) won't do that because then someone could make the purchase, copy the disks, corrupt them somehow (lot's of ways), and then return them demanding a full refund.

/-/

The seller is the best person to test the disks, but they may not have the equipment and, even if they did, really doesn't have the ability to know if the contents are intact beyond being able to read the directories.

It's a definite gamble. Worth communicating with the seller about your concerns and seeing if you can work something out. Given the age of the media, he's got to recognize that your concerns are valid and that the reasonable value of the item has to reflect the degree to which they are (or aren't) dealt with.

Yes, agreed. Even if the seller can not thoroughly test the disk, just running chkdsk would be a big help. But, that would mean breaking the sealed package, which I am sure the seller would not want to do - and would also not want to test their disks and find out they were bad. Yeah, before dropping 5 Benjis, I would want to do some kind of negotiating...but it is a tough situation.

 

@strantor AB typically used the Key disc system for quite a while, the SW I have is the RS-Logix so won't do you much good.
I do have the old copy key disc if you need to try and duplicate one called CopyQM.
I see there is still one site you can get it apparently http://krick.3feetunder.com/copyqm/
Max.

 

I hate Allen-Bradley ... I'm more of a Siemens, or ABB kind of guy ... as for Mitsubishi, back in the nineties their PLC's required the use of a $300.00 dlls cable to communicate with a PC ... thank you but no thank you ...

Omron guy here, and I'm not an AB fan either. Their products are the best; I won't contest that. Their hardware and software are ahead of the competition by at least 10% in every category; availability, functionality, ease of use, quality, etc. But their prices are ahead by 900%! It's not exactly the magnitude of the prices that irritates me, it's the quantity of the prices, and they way they weaponize/manipulate the prices to steer their agenda. You get NO bonus with AB, NOTHING. Free cable? NO! Free software? NO! Tech support? They won't talk to you unless you have a paid tech support contract. Who heard of such a thing? They nickle and dime you for every single little thing, down to terminal screws. And the prices are outrageous! $2,500 for a cable to talk to their PLC over a proprietary protocol through a proprietary little round jack. Proprietary proprietary PROPRIETARY. Everything proprietary. And expensive. They hike the price of things as they get older. Compare the price of RSLogix 5 these days to Studio 5000. $8300 for software from the early 2000's, but hey "at least they still sell it." It takes absolutely zero effort to stock software. The legacy PLC components I can understand; to keep manufacturing and selling PLC-5 processors after they're obsolete, that takes effort. I understand those being expensive. But software? WTF? I don't NEED any updates to RSLogix 5 - if there's an issue they didn't get fixed by 2004, it's obviously not crucial. I don't NEED you to keep paying someone to manage that "product line." Just keep the damned CDs on the shelf and don't rape me when I try to buy them. No, they intentionally make it ever-more-expensive to own their products, to keep you perpetually upgrading to new versions of their products. Well I had enough; I've upgraded to other manufacturers. I don't build systems with AB components. I'll work on whatever you want me to work on, existing, but building brand new with Rockwell conflicts with my values.

I'm aparently going to be an AutomationDirect guy now. Giving the Productivity 3000 a shot. Customer just placed the order for the parts. I'm a little nervous. I rely heavily on my Structured Text, custom data types, and user FBs, and I'm not sure how I'll get by without them. But cost was priority so that steered my choice. It's going to be an adventure!

 

@strantor AB typically used the Key disc system for quite a while, the SW I have is the RS-Logix so won't do you much good.
I do have the old copy key disc if you need to try and duplicate one called CopyQM.
I see there is still one site you can get it apparently http://krick.3feetunder.com/copyqm/
Max.

thanks. I have to find an activation diskette or image though. I have nothing to copy until I get that. and once I have it, I have it. I suppose it would be prudent to make a backup of it as soon as I get it though.

 

And the prices are outrageous! $2,500 for a cable to talk to their PLC over a proprietary protocol through a proprietary little round jack. Proprietary proprietary PROPRIETARY. Everything proprietary. And expensive. They hike the price of things as they get older.

Allen-Bradley have always been the same from my experience with them starting in the 80's. Very pricey components and systems, also I have been on a few seminars where they also charge you to learn THIER equipment.
Many others I have attended you only need to register and show up, the rest is free.
Fanuc CNC systems is another that ape the same practices as AB, down to a charge for over the phone service, in spite of being a leader of CNC sales in the industry.
Max.

 

You should be able to make an exact copy of the floppies using dd, it comes standard with most Linux builds and there are builds for Windows floating around. The Arduino toolkit includes a build of dd, though I can't vouch for its performance. I would personally make copies of every floppy first, then work with the copies and leave the originals on the shelf. This explains how to make an image and copy of a floppy disk, it should work similar under Windows with some syntax changes:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/Applications_GUI_Multimedia/How_To_Do_Eveything_With_DD

Over the years I've had many floppies suddenly stop working, though I'm in Florida where humidity is very high which may have something to do with it. The average life of a floppy sandwiched between pages of a book and stored in a backpack is less than one semester, don't ask me how I know..

 

if it is old and pain to support now, guess how much pain it will be to support later. i would say stop investing in relics, replace it with contemporary model. relics can be sold on eBay to next guy desperate enough to get spares. i see it as a loosing battle...

 

if it is old and pain to support now, guess how much pain it will be to support later. i would say stop investing in relics, replace it with contemporary model. relics can be sold on eBay to next guy desperate enough to get spares. i see it as a loosing battle...

Ya know, that is a good and valid point - yet I am sometimes amazed at how many "relics" are out there....and working. A close friend of mine (who, in many ways s the best programmer that I ever met) is employed, literally, because he understands so many "legacy" systems.

I don't know, but I get the feeling that many companies had a hard time rationalizing a budget to modernize a system that worked and wasn't broken - or they tried to modernize it and got burned. Remember a scramble for COBOL programmers when 2000 was coming up?

 

You should be able to make an exact copy of the floppies using dd, it comes standard with most Linux builds and there are builds for Windows floating around. The Arduino toolkit includes a build of dd, though I can't vouch for its performance. I would personally make copies of every floppy first, then work with the copies and leave the originals on the shelf. This explains how to make an image and copy of a floppy disk, it should work similar under Windows with some syntax changes:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/answers/Applications_GUI_Multimedia/How_To_Do_Eveything_With_DD

Over the years I've had many floppies suddenly stop working, though I'm in Florida where humidity is very high which may have something to do with it. The average life of a floppy sandwiched between pages of a book and stored in a backpack is less than one semester, don't ask me how I know..

This morning I read some 3.5" floppies that were made over 20 years ago...with no problem. It all depends.

Also, there certainly are plenty of programs still around to do low-level read/write to disks. It does not *always* guarantee effective duplication....this is a stretch, I know, but it reminded me. Once I was absolutely obsessed with trying to understand how the $#@* some protected software was able to completely elude duplication (no dongle). It was messing with my head

As it turned out, the diskette was systematically damaged on one track - that was the protection. With the right software, you could duplicate the disk just fine and, of course, that area would come up bad, but nothing was in it...or so one might think. So, your copy had the bad sectors, just fine.

The protection, however, would then try and format the expected bad track. Of course, it would succeed on the copy and not run. It would fail on the original, as it should. Took a long freaking time to figure that out!

 

if it is old and pain to support now, guess how much pain it will be to support later. i would say stop investing in relics, replace it with contemporary model. relics can be sold on eBay to next guy desperate enough to get spares. i see it as a loosing battle...

This PLC3 is the brain stem for a whole shipping port. 2 gantry cranes, 4 ship loading spiral conveyor cranes, 2 huge warehouse conveyors, dozens of smaller conveyors feeding onto the larger ones, transfer conveyors which take product out of the warehouse to the spiral cranes, etc. There are 30+ (newer) local slave PLCs which are coordinated by this ancient master PLC. It's really impressive (even by today's standards) how everything works together when a ship pulls in and the immense warehouse empties itself into the belly of a ship almost automatically. This PLC hasn't been replaced because in 35 years they haven't had a chance to slow down long enough to do it. So they pamper it, pray over it, and lose sleep worrying about it. If it goes down the port goes down. I don't think the company could survive an outage long enough to do a proper retrofit. There are over 7,500 rungs of ladder in it; it will be no small task to replicate that.

 

i demand video...

 

i demand video...

I'll take a video next time I'm there while it's running. But for some reason it seems they only invite me when it's not .

I can provide some stills though.

 

This PLC3 is the brain stem for a whole shipping port. 2 gantry cranes, 4 ship loading spiral conveyor cranes, 2 huge warehouse conveyors, dozens of smaller conveyors feeding onto the larger ones, transfer conveyors which take product out of the warehouse to the spiral cranes, etc. There are 30+ (newer) local slave PLCs which are coordinated by this ancient master PLC. It's really impressive (even by today's standards) how everything works together when a ship pulls in and the immense warehouse empties itself into the belly of a ship almost automatically. This PLC hasn't been replaced because in 35 years they haven't had a chance to slow down long enough to do it. So they pamper it, pray over it, and lose sleep worrying about it. If it goes down the port goes down. I don't think the company could survive an outage long enough to do a proper retrofit. There are over 7,500 rungs of ladder in it; it will be no small task to replicate that.

Sounds like they are sticking their heads in the sand.

Yes, they have a real problem in figuring out how to upgrade it. But they also have a huge risk, as you've pointed out, to NOT upgrading it. Is there anyone there that things this thing is going to run indefinitely?

What are they going to do when it does finally fail? Declare bankruptcy and call it a day? Is that when they are going to start trying to figure out how to upgrade it?

Seems like a much more sensible thing to do would be to hire someone (or some company) to build a pin-compatible replacement for it based on current technology. Part of that could be tapping all the I/O of the present one and then having the replacement sitting off to the side listening to the same inputs and generating, ideally, the same outputs but have a monitor that records everything and flags any events in which the two systems don't agree. Then have the party preparing the upgrade fix it. Then, hopefully, by the time the thing packs in it you will have a validated replacement that you can quickly swap out.

Or, they can continue playing ostrich.

What will the civil courts there do to them when the unit fails and the port shuts down for an extended period of time or is unable to operate anywhere near the capacity it needs to and it becomes known that they have been playing ostrich for years instead of preparing for the inevitable?

 

floppies are degraded, constantly.
First is if it had been kept in the pocket or even just in the bag together with mobile phone, there is the more than 50% risk, that in time of mobile tower handshaking the floppy startup sector will be damaged. Sometimes with aid of good DataDoctor software it is possible to get data back, but most often its not.
The second risk is just keeping a years long. Third is violating the humidity and temperature regiment. As soon the one or both are changed (winter-summer-winter-summer) as the layer gets micro-cracks what is translated as new surplus bits of info.
So, the only way is to `check by battle` - if it is still working then fast make a hard copy.
And dont forget that if Your data must be safe for decades, condemn all the even best CD and DVD disks, forget the even best HDD (however the best may keep safe the one or maximum two decades long), highly suspicious are even SD. The only trustable indeed thingy is optomagnetics. To erase or add in that, one need the superposition of magnetic field AND optical ray. So, OM, or simple speech SKAZI discs, exists in two formats, mini sized what are damn expensive and contains about the half of CD volume. Other is older standard, like A floppy, what contain about half of that, but is thrown out by tons in the banks and governments, thus sometime may be obtained for `three dollars a full lorry`. At least for them the producer had given a 70 years WARRANTY.

 

If it is that important to them, they shouldn't mind a $300.00 gamble.
Being able to keep that thing running is job security and you will be indispensable.
Any spare parts for it that you can acquire or reproduce will only cement your position.
You need a raise.

 

Sounds like they are sticking their heads in the sand.

Yes, they have a real problem in figuring out how to upgrade it. But they also have a huge risk, as you've pointed out, to NOT upgrading it. Is there anyone there that things this thing is going to run indefinitely?

What are they going to do when it does finally fail? Declare bankruptcy and call it a day? Is that when they are going to start trying to figure out how to upgrade it?

Seems like a much more sensible thing to do would be to hire someone (or some company) to build a pin-compatible replacement for it based on current technology. Part of that could be tapping all the I/O of the present one and then having the replacement sitting off to the side listening to the same inputs and generating, ideally, the same outputs but have a monitor that records everything and flags any events in which the two systems don't agree. Then have the party preparing the upgrade fix it. Then, hopefully, by the time the thing packs in it you will have a validated replacement that you can quickly swap out.

Or, they can continue playing ostrich.

What will the civil courts there do to them when the unit fails and the port shuts down for an extended period of time or is unable to operate anywhere near the capacity it needs to and it becomes known that they have been playing ostrich for years instead of preparing for the inevitable?

All valid points/questions and I don't have the answers. My guess is that it's been game of hot potato in upper middle management for the past two decades. "Just keep it going until I move to a new position and it's not my problem anymore

 

I don't think the company could survive an outage long enough to do a proper retrofit. There are over 7,500 rungs of ladder in it; it will be no small task to replicate that.

I certainly hope they have a back up of the ladder!
I would think the safest course of action is to purchase an updated PLC system and write the ladder based on the old documentation etc and test off line as much as possible before installing and doing the final test & debug.
Max.

 

How many of those systems are still in use? If you can master them, you could be "The Guy" everyone calls to keep them resurrected until they totally disintegrate.

 

How many of those systems are still in use?

Visit any factory that had their assembly line retrofitted around the 80's - 90's from Hardwired control panels to PLC as many factory automation lines did and you will still come across them.
As long as it is working and spares are available, they are generally loath to replace.
Max.

 

This PLC3 is the brain stem for a whole shipping port. 2 gantry cranes, 4 ship loading spiral conveyor cranes, 2 huge warehouse conveyors, dozens of smaller conveyors feeding onto the larger ones, transfer conveyors which take product out of the warehouse to the spiral cranes, etc.

Out of curiosity strantor, do they load bagged cargoes?

I've seen those spiral things shooting bags inside ships' holds to tightly cram the space in Pequiven, Venezuela. Some type of fertilizer IIRC.