CompactLogix Gen 1: Automation Tech Talk for August 19, 2025

Shawn discusses the First Generation of Compactlogix Controllers in today's Automation Tech Talk, Lunchtime Edition: Watch Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog: Listen to Automation Tech Talk on The Automation Blog: Automation Tech Talk Show Notes: Thanks for listening! If you'd like to join the show sometime, don't hesitate to use the contact us link. Links mentioned in video: - Article: https://theautomationblog.com/compactlogix-gen-1/ - Course: https://theautomationschool.com/courses/015-cpx-l12/ Read the transcript on The Automation Blog: (automatically generated) Shawn Tierney (Host): Hey everybody. Hope you can hear me. I'm trying something a little bit different here. Welcome to automation tech talk lunchtime edition, and, I hope you guys can hear me. I hope, you can see me because I've changed everything around. But, because I have all the equipment here for my new twenty twenty five courses on the workbench, and I don't have any of the other studio set up for what I want to cover today, I decided to cover generation one of the CompactLogic. So I'm just gonna look over here. It seems like audio is working. Okay? It seems like the video is okay. So in any case, feel free to say hi in the chat if you're watching. But, lots going on here. I just had, three vendors send in, samples for me to look at. Actually, one is a trade show demo from Automation Fair, so I'm looking forward to, covering that. The other is a brand new line of IO. Very exciting. And then the third are some Ethernet push buttons. So I hope to have more about that. Plus, I have, more boxes of stuff donated to the automation museum. So, just so much to cover in the coming weeks and days. And, but in any case, one thing I do every day too is work on my courses, not only, answer questions, but also work on my courses. And I'm getting ready to update them all for 2025. And I just wanted to say if you are already enrolled in any of my Compact Logics, whether it's level one, level one, two, you get the new cost for free, so don't worry about that. So in any case, today, I wanna talk about, though, is the first generation of CompactLogix because a lot of people have never even seen them, not even know they exist, but have never seen them. And, just some real interesting stuff here. And, let me first show you with the, overhead cam here. Let's see if I can do this. Do I still have audio? Yep. Okay. So, in any case, you can see here, this is the l 30, and I'm actually connected through a serial port. I'm using a USB, a USPS rev three from Rockwell that I bought years and years ago. And, let me see if I can zoom in on that. You can see I don't have everything wired up for the new courses yet. So, be spending some nights and weekends doing that. But you can see there, I have one of just my, sample program in there. This is the one I use. If you're in my VUE course, you'll be very familiar with this program. But in any case, with all the molding simulators, code in there and whatnot. So but I also wanna get on here. I'm just gonna stick it off top of the Polysplike, the l 20. And in the description of today's show, I have an article I wrote years ago that kinda detailed some of these things, but the l 20 was the very first CompactLogix to come out. Now I had sourced its release to late twenty I'm sorry, late two thousand or twenty zero zero in any case. But, but, you know, whether it came out early two thousand one or late, February, you know, that was almost directly after, like, a year after the ControlLogix l one, the 5550, controller. So pretty quick. And, this, unit came in either a single serial port or dual serial port. Now the, the, l 30 I have written down here is, came out the following year, okay, about a year later. And so if we look at that, I mean, it may have been six months later, but, I have one coming down at, one coming out in February, one coming out in 02/2001. And these were known. I'm trying to get close so you can see the label there. This one was known as the 5320. See it up there? And this one was and I know it's hard to see because it's at a different level there, but maybe it'll zoom in better if I take it off. 5330. And so we talk a lot about fifty three seventies and fifty three eighties. Right? But this is where that whole nomenclature, began way back when. And, yeah, so 25 years old, 24 years old. And, there were some interesting things about that. Now first of all, this guy had no removable memory, no SD card, none of that stuff. It did have a battery in here. Oh, that's noisy. See the battery in there? And I believe this is the same battery we were using in the slick one hundreds. I'm sorry. Slick five hundreds, the seventy forty seven b a, but I think it was had a seventeen sixteen maybe a 17, 69 b a one. But I'm not gonna take it out just to see it. I always leave them unplugged because they would just go dead. So screechy. You can see there some of the pinouts on the side of the unit. And, you know, the one cool thing about them is is kinda like the the original ControlLogix. This particular unit had built in a EEPROM. In other words, there was a flash or EEPROM equivalent soldered to the board, and so you could actually store your program internally. So if the battery died or if you get a lightning strike and a power surge, sometimes that'll make these guys forget what their program is, then you would have, you still have your program there. Now a lot of times, people would make changes to their program, and they would forget. They would forget to, to update the, the internal memory. So but, hey. That's gonna happen with every PLC that has flash or, you know, removal of memory or, you know, built in memory. Now the problem with that was that, you know, OEMs typically like the lower, less expensive version of the controller, like, for instance, CompactLogix versus ControlLogix. And without removable memory, how do you how do you set them an update? That was one of the big problems with the l 23, but that's the next generation. We're not gonna get into that. But still, it was a great it does take a long time to download the serial at nineteen two, which is kinda what everybody defaults to. A serial at '21, I'll tell you what. It I was really annoyed because I had to download it to reset some things, and I had to download it again to change some things and so on and so forth. So, it was like, I actually brought the air conditioner in here because it was getting so hot with the lights on. I'm like, how long are these downloads gonna take? But in any case, in the days of Ethernet, serial just is so hard to go back to, but, it works. And, in any case, so these guys were very interesting. Now the l 20, besides only having a single serial port, it has no isolated ports. Right? So if you want to take the communications out of that serial port, maybe you wanna do d h 45, you definitely have to go through an AIC plus to May to give you an isolated port because NEC says you can't have a network that runs to your POC that's not isolated. Okay? So if this port's not isolated, then you need an isolator, and the AC plus is the ice isolated link coupler, I think, or something like that. Anyways, so, that was one of the limits of the l 20. The speed uploading and downloading to it was a limit, and they picked up something from the from the, Micrologist guys, this port reset. Right? And we'll we'll take a look at that in a minute. But, this channel zero default button, it wasn't a toggle. It was a reset. A reset channel zero settings, it didn't toggle them. Like, in the Micrologix, it toggles between default and what you had to set at. So if you had to set at d h 45 or a modbus, you press the button, it toggles back to d f one full duplex. You press it again, it goes back. Well, not on this guy. It kinda, like, erases it. And we're gonna test that out, but that's what that's what the manual says, and that's been my experience. But in any case, so no removal merit memory, only serial, I e very slow. And then this guy only could do the l 20 can only do eight modules where the l 30 could do 16. L 20 can only do one extra bank, so two banks total. The l 30 could do three banks. So if you had a very narrow enclosure, and and these are not rated. I I I tell these just to people. I know a lot of proud panel builders are showing their panels on, on, LinkedIn, and, a lot of times when I see them put a product, vertically instead of horizontally, there's not many Rockwell products you can put vertically. So always check the manual, but I always, like, secretly send them an instant message saying, hey. You may wanna take that that picture down because you have it mounted incorrectly. So in any case and and most of these products, something like a like VFDs and other products, you get derate them when you mount them vertically. Most of the rockwove's POCs, you can't just can't mount them vertically. They're just not designed for that because you don't get the convection airflow. Now, I mean, you could do whatever you want. It's a free country. Right? Free world. But if you want a warranty, don't tell them you'd mount it incorrectly. Right? So in any case, so that is the l 20 and the l 30. And, I wanna take a look at the, l 30 specifically, when it comes to, defaulting that serial port. Okay? So what I did is, I I uploaded the program. I changed this party. It was DH45. I changed it to DF1FullDuplex nineteen two. BCC is the default for this line. I know a lot of the products Raquel makes is CRC. And then I changed this guy to DH45. Let's go over to the computer and check that out because I'm doing everything live, so I'm hoping you guys are seeing everything okay and you can hear me fine. In any case, alright. So here, you could see I'm in the program, and let's go to control the properties....