ABACUS 4 - Linux

Based on more than 25 years of development and use ABACUS 4 is the latest in a line of process control software systems with the ABACUS name. ABACUS 4 runs on standard intel PC hardware under the Linux operating system.

News, Demo, Enquiries

The demo is available at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/commercial/abacus-4.980817.tar.gz

As of Wed Feb 10 08:37:13 CET 1999 the abacus manual has been revised to include engdraw.

A Profibus driver which allows use of the PEP Computers SMART I/O subsystem has been developed - see http://www.pep.de/products/products/smartplc/sm_ini.htm for more information. A PROFIBoard from Softing is required.

Wed Jun 30 10:04:09 CEST 1999 - These pages have been moved to http://hem2.passagen.se/frankmcn/abacus4.html because of changes in the terms of service at geocities after takeover by yahoo. If you find any nonfunctional links please mail me at  abacusabacus@hotmail.com

As of summer 1999 modbus is available in the standard ABACUS4 edition.

Later this year a SIOX protocol driver will become available.

The manual has been reworked and updated into a single document (~240k) as is available here.

Process Control System

The ABACUS 4 process control system is a block based software system for the real time control of industrial and other continuous and batch processes.

Process I/O systems

The plant connection to ABACUS 4 may be achieved using a variety of hardware including the rack mounted PI-Bus system from Bristol Babcock, the

Networking

Since ABACUS 4 runs on the Linux operating system it is fully TCP/IP compatible.

Operator Interface

The ABACUS 4 operator interface is X windows based, allowing comprehensive displays distributed over the TCP/IP network. Local Ethernet, local and modem serial links and even The Internet.

Engineering facilities

The ABACUS 4 block program is edited on the running machine completely eliminating the compiling, and downloading of other systems. There is a text based engineers tools, very useful over slow serial links, and a graphics based engineering tool using X.

Screen dumps

The following is taken from a pumping station control system demonstration.

Pumping Station Mimic

This display and the others in this demonstration are constructed using the Tcl/Tk languages. These have the advantage that they are freely available for Windows95, UNIX, Macintosh, Windows3.1 (etc.) and WindowsNT

Trend Display

Trends are stored in local binary files, and displayed (with continuous update) with the trend display.

Process Mimic Display

Dynamic numerical values updated continuously, level in 'Distillate Storage' is also dynamic.

Alarm Status Display

This displays the currently unacknowledged alarms. Active, unacknowledged alarms flash red, and have U in the first column (useful if viewed on a monochrome screen, or printout)

Journal Display

This display allow the operator to see the last 200 (configurable) events in the journal file. The display may be scrolled up to examine earlier lines.

The  Unix/ABACUS version of the Software Reference Manual (old version) is available in HTML format. New version is here.

History of ABACUS

The first ABACUS (Data General 1200)

ABACUS 4 is the latest of a line which started in the early 1970's. The first ABACUS systems ran on DATA GENERAL 1200 minicomputers with 32 Kb (later 64 Kb) of main (yes ferrite core) memory, and no magnetic disks! Operators could change setpoints etc. via specially constructed 'Operators panels' with seven segment displays and buttons. A KSR 110 baud printer complete with paper tape reader and punch was used for the engineering interface. (An engineers or 'command' panel was used at one stage, but was found to be too expensive, and inflexible and so was discontinued). There were software blocks for process I/O (analog inputs, digital inputs and outputs and pulse duration outputs for process control) logic (checklist, switch and pattern blocks) and process control was done with the 'control' block. Later logging blocks of various sorts were added when text and semigraphic displays appeared and replaced the first panels. All numerical calculations were performed in 16 bit 'fixed point' decimal or integer format.

The process I/O was custom made and was driven directly by cards mounted in the computer. External isolation mudules made for a robust if rather expensive process I/O system. The analog input system used the flying capacitor technique later employed in the PI-Bus system.

ABACUS II (PDP)

In the early 1980's ABACUS II was born. This system ran under the RSX11M operating system on PDP 11 minicomputers. First PDP 11/23, then PDP 11/73. The first systems was diskless, but the majority had 10, 30 and then 70 Mb disks used for the operating system and historical/trend data storage in addition to data dumping. These systems were used to control paper machines steam generating boilers and various other industrial applications.

Some new blocks were added, but the 16 bit 'fixed point' decimal or integer format, whilst altered from +/- 255.99 to +/- 327.67, remained. This was important for speed of execution in the days when floating point processors added significant cost!

The process interface used was Bristol Babcock's PI-Bus. This was developed to serve several different processors each having a different 'bus converter' card. PI-Bus was in fact used on the last of the original ABACUS systems.

PI-Bus is a bus system built around a double height 19 inch Euro rack. 18 cards per rack. Digital input and output cards accommodate 16 signals per card, analog inputs have 8 'flying capacitor' inputs on each multiplexor card in addition two extra cards (Analog Input Controller Card AICC, and Calibration card).

VAX ABACUS

In the early 1990's ABACUS was completely rewritten in C and implemented using the VMS operating system and became VAX ABACUS. Floating point numbers and the ability to reconfigure the number of each block type without recompilation were new features of this system. The operators interface was the Bristol Babcock Enterprise. The Server half of which ran on the same VAX machine, and one or more external PCs running OS/2 supported the Enterprise Windows operator station. Process I/O was the distributed SIOX system from Telefrang AB. PI/Bus was connectable as an upgrade to PDP systems.

ABACUS 4

ABACUS 4 started as a porting of VAX ABACUS to Linux (the free Un*x operating system found on a large number of Internet servers around the world). New process I/O drivers have been added, most notably for the Computerboards DAS08 series of IDE cards, and the Indata distributed uPLC range. A new graphical engineers tools has been implemented allowing design, implementation, and documentation of the control scheme from one and the same X based program.

ABACUS 4 / Linux will run on any supported intel based computer hardware, thus hardware costs benefiting from large scale mass production. Hardware being easily second sourced, and replaced with commercially available equipment in emergencies.

The operator interface may be either an existing Enterprise Server/Windows, or an X based display system.

Enquiries

If you are interested in trying ABACUS 4 a demo version is available below. Please send any mail to abacusabacus@hotmail.com . Please let me know of your success or otherwise.
 

Demo

Requirements

Get thedemo - ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/commercial/abacus-4.980817.tar.gz.

This will run for two hours before you must restart it.

The file contains a README.1ST file in /home/abacus. It is designed to be installed with installpkg (Slackware) or as root (cd / ; tar -xzvf where_ever_it_is/abacus-4.980817.tar.gz ) . It contains all the files for the user abacus who has as his/her HOME=/home/abacus. You are required to create such a user.

Good luck!

ABACUS Manual

The ABACUS 4 manual is included in the demo release file, but if you want to browse it now press here.
Last updated  Wed Sep 15 07:46:07 CEST 1999by Frank McNamara.