Applies To:
  • CitectSCADA 5.xx, 6.00
  • CitectHMI 5.xx, 6.00
Summary:
I cannot seem to get my ABCLX driver to come online. 

Solution:
Citect's ABCLX driver may experience issues regarding difficulty bringing devices online for numerous reasons. This KB assumes that the Boards, Ports and IODevices forms are correctly filled in as outlined in the help.

Firstly ensure you have the latest release version of the driver.

If you are still unable to get your devices online:

Step 1: If you are attempting to use the ABCLX driver over a dialup/wireless/radio network or a network with very poor transmission speeds and bandwidths. Please ensure you are using ABCLX driver version 3.02.14.000 or higher.  Please refer to KB Q4058 for further information regarding this setup.

Step 2 : Adjust the System Overhead Time Slice in the PLC to the highest value that does not interfere with the running of operations on the PLC. The System Overhead Time Slice in the PLC is adjusted from the ControlLogix programming software (RSLOGIX) by right clicking on the controller and navigating to the "Controller Properties" then click on the "Advanced" tab.

Step 3 : Arrange your variable.dbf by IO Device then DataType. This is good engineering practice with any Citect project as it allows Citect to create requests by blocking the same data types within an IO Device together. Please refer to KB Q4074 OID Tag Based Drivers for very important information including the importance of packing and resetting your OIDs when performing a full compile.

Step 4 : Run the Citect system and enter the kernel. Select "View" then "Drivers" and navigate to the board using the ABCLX driver. Press "v" for verbose and expand the window to see its entire contents. Ensure that you do not have any "Bad Tags". If you have "Bad Tags" use the ABCLX logging to generate logs to find which tags are bad. Also ensure that you do not have any "Tag Config Warnings". Please refer to KB titled "ABCLX LOGGING" for information on generating logs for the ABCLX driver.

Step 5 : Shut down the system and after eradicating the bad tags, if you are still unable to get the PLC online, shutdown Citect and set the following parameters:

[ABCLX]
ConnTimeout=30000
Inittimeout=30000
Scanrate=10000

Step 6 : Start Citect and see if you have been successful in getting the PLC online. If your device still doesn't come on line, you will be required to tune the driver to help bring units online by reducing the ForwardOpenPoolSize to 1. This generally occurs with larger tag databases and is done by adding the additional ini parameter:

[ABCLX]
ForwardOpenPoolSize=1

Step 7 : If your PLC remains offline after systematically following the advice in this KB, please refer to the ABCLX help file and /or contact Citect Support.



For information on optimising your ABCLX system please refer to KB Q4064 Optimising ABCLX - A Warning about Aliasing Digitals, KB Q4035 A Guide to Tuning the ABCLX Driver for Optimum Performance and the ABCLX help file.
 
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