RA Obsolescence

If I only had a nickel for every SLC, PLC5, and MicroLogix in use today. I’d be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. They all had their day but their days are now so long ago many have been forgotten. Rockwell is busily moving a lot of products into “Active Mature,” “End of Life,” and “Discontinued” status. Active Mature are the ones for which are still being manufacturing but they want you to move to the designated successor. End of Life products are the ones that are no longer being manufactured. You can get a last time buy and generally order them until the discontinue date. And Discontinued are just that, they’re gone and forgotten. If you have one of them, good luck.

This is all understandable from their point of view. Technology is moving on. Most were built before the internet when security was an unheard of issue. Parts for those old products are nearly impossible to procure and even the manufacturing technologies are out of date. They are moving forward with new products, new technologies, and new architectures. It’s perfectly sensible for them.

But if you’re one of their customers that are using one of these products, End of Life and Discontinued are big problems for you. You’ve got perfectly fine manufacturing systems using these products. You could upgrade and get the newer, faster device – it’ll cost you time and money to upgrade – but in the end you’ll still be making the same old product. Often there won’t be an iota of benefit to you for spending all that time and money.

Well, RTA is trying to help you with some of this. We are now announcing the RTA NET ENI – a replacement module for the 1761-NET-ENI. This module is nearly identical to the Rockwell NET-ENI.

There are a few differences:
• It’s the standard RTA Gateway Footprint
• It supports 10 connections instead of 6
• There is no RS-232 Serial power or isolation
• There is no RS232 Mini Din Connector

For the majority of applications, this unit will work just like the NET-ENI. Two applications where you might need it are:

Remote Programming – There are a lot of applications where you’ll need to program Rockwell serial PLCs over Ethernet. This module will do that for you just like the old NET-ENI.

Logix to Serial Communication – In many applications, you need to send messages between Logix PLCs and the old serial PLCs. This module will easily handle that application case for you too.

If you’re interested in this module, you can click this link, NET-ENI Replacement Module, call us on 800-249-1612. We’d be happy to hear from you.

Our mission, here at RTA, is to simplify your life. You need to keep a lot of this old stuff running a lot longer and we hope to be there for you to help you do it.

If there are any other modules or components that you’re missing or need, give us a call. We’re here to help.