Control System: [One Question per Week] Week 9 of 2011: Compatibility of DCS systems from different manufacturers with operating systems

Which operating systems are compatible with DCS systems depends on the version; for example, the YOKOGAWA Centum VP uses Vista version 4.XX, while the YOKOGAWA CS3000 comes in NT (version 2XX) and 2000.XP (version 3.XX) versions. The same is true for Zhejiang University’s control systems.

I think the current operating systems present challenges: new systems like VISTA and WIN7 lack stability, and XP is not very stable either. They are fine for everyday use, but they have issues when used in industrial computers that need to run continuously. So far, WIN2000 remains relatively stable, but hardware manufacturers no longer provide drivers for it. Even drivers for XP are hard to find; as hardware evolves, the drivers either do not exist, are unavailable, or are incompatible. It’s really frustrating. When buying a new industrial computer, installing it is a problem. . . Even relatively new DCS systems can support VISTA, but stability is an issue, with problems such as redundant files and system crashes. . . . It seems I need to communicate with DCS and Microsoft, haha. There may be other operating systems, but I am not aware of them at the moment.

To discuss this, we need to look at it as a whole. One cannot simply look at the higher or lower positions. Other systems have not been tested in depth. Let me briefly talk about the center console. First, in a virtual machine environment where the host machine runs Windows 7 and the virtual machine uses Windows XP, ECS700 cannot be installed or used properly when VPC is utilized. If the virtual machine software is VM, only ECS700, ECS100, and other central control software are available; no other such software exists. If the virtual machine is a 32-bit WIN7 system, so far no one has noticed anything. The internal tests conducted by the central control team did not reveal any major issues, but the possibility of problems still cannot be ruled out. Virtual machines seem to have many problems on the 64-bit system WIN7; many programs cannot be executed. The above is only related to the issue of running a virtual machine in a virtual machine environment under WIN7. In the case of multiple virtual machines, under the XP system, ECS100 allows normal file downloads between these virtual machines. Between the OS stations of ECS700, it is possible to identify each other’s server types and IP addresses, but there is no way for them to communicate with each other; the cause of this issue is still under investigation. If it’s not in a virtual machine, for WIN7 32-bit systems and older, the unofficial stance of the control system is that full support is available for them all at present. However, the XP SP2 system is still used as the operating system for computers shipped from the factory. (The other systems have not undergone extensive testing.) For example, the testing of WIN7 was simply carried out by employees within the central control engineering department based on their personal preferences. In fact, it doesn’t make much sense to talk about these things, because with any domestic system, if you use a system that isn’t officially recommended, they will shift responsibility by claiming that the problems arose because you didn’t follow the installation guidelines. I think we can focus on discussions about foreign systems. For example, ABB’s AC800F: At present, the 800F doesn’t pose too many problems on WIN7 32-bit systems; at least the latest version of the software does support WIN7 32-bit systems. However, the 64-bit version seems not to have been officially released yet. Moreover, do we really need the AC800F with a 64-bit system? Personally, I’m quite interested in this topic. For example, the support status of a certain product from a particular manufacturer in different systems and environments, and so on. .

Current operating systems indeed present a big problem, as Microsoft no longer provides support for XP and 2003. It seems that few DCS systems can directly support Win7 and 2008; running them in virtual machine environments is, in my opinion, only a temporary solution, and such systems tend to be unstable. I remember that when Honeywell introduced its TPS on the NT platform, a virtual environment was used as well, and it was clear that using it led to instability.

Regardless of which one, it is mainly the stability of the DCS system. Some are too sensitive, often causing chain reactions that lead to shutdowns, without it being possible to identify the specific cause.

Honeywell PKS is compatible with 2000.xp, server2003; the latest version compatible is Win7

In Foxboro IA, there are systems based on XP and UNIX; while Zhejiang University’s control systems generally use Win2000. There are also models such as XP-300 and JX300

I have installed Honeywell PKS 2.10 WIN2000 SERVER (English), 3.12 WIN2003 SERVER (English), TPS WIN2000 (English), WINNT (English) on all systems; as well as Emerson DeltaV 7.3, WINXP SP1 (English), Foxboro IA WINXP SP1 (English), YOKOGAWA Centum 3000 WINXP (Chinese), ABB 800XA WINXP (Chinese), Zhejiang University Zhongkong 7 WINXP (Chinese), WIN2000 (Chinese), and HaliTech WINXP (Chinese)

I have used the JX300 central control unit, installing it on both Win2000 and XP systems, with no problems. Initially, both our engineer stations and operation stations ran on Win2000; but once the hard drive in one of the engineer stations failed, I replaced it with another hard drive and installed the XP operating system. So now the engineer stations run on XP, while all the operation stations still use Win2000. Everything has been working properly for almost half a year now.

WINDOWS 7 is still quite stable, but factories still prefer 32-bit XP