[ale] OT: Old TI PLCs

[rb211 at tds.net (William Bagwell)]

Another OT, potentially interesting and *hopefully* non-controversial 
topic.

We have a couple of machines at my work that use TI 500 series PLCs from 
the late eighties. Both are 530C's with diffrent dash numbers (I'm at home 
today and do not have either number with me) Our new (to us) machine came 
with a dead battery which means it had lost its program. OEM sold us a 
program that is *supposed* to work. However, they are not the original 
OEM just the current owner and offer no further support. 

About five years ago our existing smaller machine took a dump and lost its 
program. A coworker found an out of state guru who set us up a way to 
re-load the program with an old DOS based computer. Got us through that 
problem but is little help with the current. We can 'talk' to the 
new machines PLC with the software for the smaller machine, but can not 
load the correct program since it is in a diffrent format.

Looking for someone in state we can hire to help with this. Or if it is 
even possible, someone (in or out of state) that can transfer the program 
from .vpu files to the .530 files the DOS based program is looking for. 
(This is more than a simple re-naming) In either case paying them for 
their skills is not a problem as long as air fare is not involved.
-- 
William