[etherlab-users] Corrupt mailbox response

[Richard Hacker]

Hi Henry,

many thanks for you extensive explanation of the drive.

The EtherCAT conformance test tool has been checking the SII contents for many 
years already, so there is no reason for the SII contents to be incorrect, 
other than not having used the test tool in the first place or simply ignoring 
the notification in the test report. 

Vendors who want to place EtherCAT products on the market are compelled to 
comply to the EtherCAT standard, otherwise they may not call their products 
"EtherCAT". The test tool is one method of checking conformance. "It-works-
with-TwinCAT" is definately not a valid test! TwinCAT is just one of a wide 
spectrum of EtherCAT masters.

Most of the time, the best way of getting a product to comply to the EtherCAT 
specification is to ask for the conformance test report. More often than not, 
you will receive new firmware to download to the slave ;)

- Richard

On Monday 29 November 2010 17:18:07 Henry Bausley wrote:
> This drive initially drove me crazy too.
> 
> 1.) You should obtain Firmware Version 3.01 from Yaskawa where they
> appear to have improved the SII EEPROM interface.   If you have anything
> earlier you may be wasting your time.  I got nowhere until I received a
> drive with this firmware from my Yaskawa USA office.
> 
> When I told Yaskawa there was a problem the initial response from their
> developers was the device passed the EtherCAT conformance test and it
> works with TwinCAT.  However, what they don't seem to recognize is that
> the EtherCAT conformance test does not test everything  for
> specification compliance and that there still may be something wrong
> with their device.  Fortunately the newer firmware seemed to fix the
> EEPROM size error I was receiving.
> 
> 2.) In addition to getting newer firmware you must declare a domain for
> the Output and a second one for the Input
> since Yaskawa sets notLRW = yes.
> 
> 3.) Moreover, the Output Domain must be registered with
> ecrt_domain_reg_pdo_entry_list before the Input Domain otherwise you
> will not have any data exchanged even though the drive goes into OP
> mode.
> http://lists.etherlab.org/pipermail/etherlab-users/2010/001000.html    I
> am not sure if this is Yaskawa's  bug or something
> in the Hilscher module they are using. The same issue occurred  in a
> Control Techniques module I tested.
> 
> I received from Yaskawa via Hilscher that SyncManager2 -> Output ->
> FMMU0 and SycnManager3 -> Input -> FMMU1
> and  this is made with the ETG concerted and an integral part of the
> ESI.
> According to Florian Pose it is arbitrary that Outputs are always mapped
> to FMMU0 and inputs are mapped to FMMU1.
> 
> 
> Maybe if IGH informs ETG of typical problems like the EEPROM size error and
>  the arbitrary FMMU usage ETG will add them to the conformance tool and we
>  will have less interoperability errors as new slaves arrive in the future.
> 
> On Thu, 2010-11-25 at 12:31 +0100, Dr.-Ing. Wilhelm Hagemeister wrote:
> > Hallo takeshi ikeya,
> >
> > the SSI-contents (EEPROM) is broken. We had that up until now with two
> > vendors.
> >
> > > I saw other user's mail about YASKAWA SIGMA5, in which he said he
> > > couldn't even get vendor ID and product code.
> >
> > Because of this we updated the Master Code. Now it is possible to read
> > the first mandatory 64 words from the EEPROM which also contain vendor
> > ID and product code. But the EtherLab-Master also needs at least the
> > sync-manager information from the EEPROM.
> >
> > Please contact the vendor and point out, that there is a conformance
> > test tool from the EtherCat technology group available to check if the
> > slave meets the spezification. Every vendor shipping EtherCat slaves has
> > to check his slaves against this tool. Ask for the test report of this
> > tool for the particular slave you are using. This usually generates
> > "enough pressure" on the vendor to improve the slave...
> >
> > Regards Wilhelm.
> > _______________________________________________
> > etherlab-users mailing list
> > etherlab-users at etherlab.org
> > http://lists.etherlab.org/mailman/listinfo/etherlab-users
> 
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Richard Hacker                               Amtsgericht Essen HRB 11500  
Ingenieurgemeinschaft IgH                    USt-Id.-Nr.: DE 174 626 722 
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D-45356 Essen                                Dr.-Ing. T. Finke           
Tel.: +49 201 / 36014-16                     Dr.-Ing. W. Hagemeister     
Fax.: +49 201 / 36014-14                     Tel.: +49 201 / 360-14-0    
richard.hacker at igh-essen.com                 http://www.igh-essen.com    

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