The distinction between inputs and outputs, and between bit-addressable and word-addressable data items, do not imply any application behavior. It is perfectly acceptable, and very common, to regard all four tables as overlaying one another, if this is the most natural interpretation on the target machine in question.
For each of the primary tables, the protocol allows individual selection of 65536 data items, and the operations of read or write of those items are designed to span multiple consecutive data items up to a data size limit which is dependent on the transaction function code.
There is no assumption that the data items represent a true contiguous array of data, although that is the interpretation used by most simple PLC’s
The ‘read and write general reference’ function codes are defined to carry a 32 bit reference number, and could be used to allow direct access to data items within a VERY large space. Today there are no PLC devices which take advantage of that.
One potential source of confusion is the relationship between the reference numbers used in MODBUS functions, and the ‘register numbers’ used in Modicon PLC’s. For historical reasons, user reference numbers were expressed as decimal numbers with a starting offset of 1. However MODBUS uses the more natural software interpretation of an unsigned integer index starting at zero.
So a modbus message requesting the read of a register at offset 0 would return the value known to the application programmer as found in register 4:00001 (memory type 4 = output register, reference 00001) |
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