Author Topic: Ultraware & Programing Allen Bradley Ultra 3000 Servo Drives  (Read 5656 times)

Offline sparky961

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Ultraware & Programing Allen Bradley Ultra 3000 Servo Drives
« on: March 30, 2018, 12:22:50 PM »
I have a number of Allen Bradley Ultra 3000 servo drives to program, and an installation file for Ultraware 1.82 of unknown origin. Trying to install this on two different computers (One Win10 and another Win7), I received a message from the installer that I did not have enough space free. Both computers had 10's or 100's of GB free on the drive, so I don't believe this is the problem. I found little while searching online for a solution.

Has anyone come across this? Installing the software _should_ have been the EASY part! It's frustrating when things that are just supposed to work, don't.

I even went so far as to register on the Allen Bradley web site to download the software. I get as far as clicking on the download link, then it asks me to confirm a serial number and some other corroborating data that I don't have since these are used drives, perhaps having multiple owners already.

Any hints or working download links would be greatly appreciated.

Offline russ57

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Re: Ultraware & Programing Allen Bradley Ultra 3000 Servo Drives
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2018, 06:22:37 PM »
You could try creating a very small partition to install to - I don't know what age the drives are, but create a typical hdd size of the era. Maybe 250megabytes.


The issue could be that when calculating the free space, it's only using (for example) 32 bits, so the actual number overflows and seems to be too small.




Russ


Offline sparky961

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Re: Ultraware & Programing Allen Bradley Ultra 3000 Servo Drives
« Reply #2 on: April 02, 2018, 12:53:43 AM »
That's not a bad idea.  Similar to what I've been trying since, but with a slightly different take on it.  I'll file it away as a potential future solution, but for now I'm not willing to repartition my very new workhorse laptop just to make this work.  Since the drives use a serial port, I'd also be using a USB to serial adapter.  Those sometimes inject problems too.

I did discover that it installs fine on a VirtualBox Windows XP installation, which lends credibility to your suggestion.  I'm not sure if it will actually talk to the hardware from there, but so far I've been very impressed with the integration they've managed.

My best bet, and the one I've been working on this evening is to set up an old laptop (circa 1996) with a physical serial port and a 2GB hard drive.  Want to guess where my snag was with this?  Getting the installation file onto the computer!  None of my USB drives worked, as they're too new and don't have '98 drivers.  The laptop doesn't have WiFi, so that's out.  3-1/2" floppy and CD-ROM, yes.... but nothing else to generate them, and the 53MB+ installation file ruled out the 1.44MB floppy from the start.  I did have a PCMCIA Ethernet adapter, so there's that.... but do you think that Windows 10 wants to play nicely with this on the network and share files?  Of course not.  The solution turned out to be pretty Rube Goldberg, but worked.

On new Windows 10 laptop:
VirtualBox running Windows XP SP3, connected to the physical wired ethernet port, network cable straight to the old laptop.  Both are set to static IP addresses and the same subnet.

Old laptop:
Just had to set the static IP.  It didn't know any better to complain.

Ah, beautiful obsolescence.  I wonder if anyone under 20 would be able to figure out how to work with all this old hardware.

I'll see if this was all in vain tomorrow.

Offline chipenter

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Re: Ultraware & Programing Allen Bradley Ultra 3000 Servo Drives
« Reply #3 on: April 02, 2018, 02:08:44 AM »
Windows defender does some stupid things like not alowing an app to open things , at least mine does . :bang:
Jeff

Offline russ57

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Re: Ultraware & Programing Allen Bradley Ultra 3000 Servo Drives
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2018, 04:34:50 AM »
Glad you are making progress.

Rather than partition your existing hdd, what about partition on a usb drive?

Russ


Offline tom osselton

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Re: Ultraware & Programing Allen Bradley Ultra 3000 Servo Drives
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2018, 02:21:39 PM »
Windows defender does some stupid things like not alowing an app to open things , at least mine does . :bang:
Mine does that too but the other day there was a continue link under the message that allowed me to proceed I'm hoping that it is a new thing they added but I haven't come across it again yet.

Offline sparky961

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Re: Ultraware & Programing Allen Bradley Ultra 3000 Servo Drives
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2018, 07:13:09 PM »
what about partition on a usb drive?

Creative idea.  I'd have never thought of that one.

Fortunately, the old laptop seems to be holding up just fine and talking to the drive.  This gives me a working solution without spending any more time or money, so that's what I'll be using until it doesn't work anymore.

I'd have liked to pursue the virtual OS installation more and see it it would work through the USB-RS232 converter, but that will have to wait until some future date.

Thanks for the suggestions on this.