Potential Firmware Incompatibilities

Knowledge Base: Troubleshooting
1

There are potential incompatibilities to be aware of if updating RMC firmware in the following situations:

IF the current RMC70/150 firmware version is older than 3.63.0,

AND either of the following is true:

  • RMCLink is communicating with the RMC
  • An older Allen-Bradley 1756-ENBT or 1756-EN2T module is communicating with the RMC

THEN, keep reading, otherwise, there are no known incompatibilities.

The following incompatibilities may arise when updating to the most recent firmware:

  1. As of RMC70/150 firmware 3.63.0 (February 2016), a new “Encapsulation Inactivity Timeout” parameter was added. This is a new EtherNet/IP requirement, and must default to closing an inactive TCP/IP connection used by EtherNet/IP after 2 minutes. This feature can be disabled from RMCTools in order to retain pre-3.63.0 behavior. There are two known incompatibilities:

    1. Applications using RMCLink that do not continuously read or write to the RMC and leave the RMCLink connection open may no longer work because the RMCLink connection will get closed after 2 minutes. The suggested workaround is disabling the “Encapsulation Inactivity Timeout” feature in the RMC using RMCTools.

    2. Older Allen-Bradley 1756-ENBT (prior to 4.007) and 1756-EN2T (prior to 1.004) Ethernet bridge modules will incorrectly close any EtherNet/IP I/O connection that was opened using the TCP/IP connection. This is seen in the RMC event log by the CIP IO connection timing out or being closed nearly exactly when the EtherNet/IP inactivity timeout occurs, which is also reported in the Event Log. The suggested solution is to upgrade the firmware in the 1756-ENBT and/or 1756-EN2T Ethernet bridge modules.

  2. As of RMC70/150 firmware 3.41.0 (April 2011), new “Quality of Service (QoS)” values are used to meet the strong recommendation of the EtherNet/IP specification. This feature can be disabled from RMCTools in order to retain pre-3.41.0 behavior. There is one known incompatibility:

  3. These new QoS values are not supported by older Allen-Bradley Ethernet bridge modules. See the “Troubleshooting EtherNet/IP I/O” topic in RMCTools documentation for exact products affected and firmware revisions. The suggested solution is to upgrade the firmware in the Allen-Bradley Ethernet bridge modules, but this feature can also be turned off in the RMC using RMCTools.