Thinkpads Forum

At work they just threw away some old Telemecanique PLC racks, so I salvaged some parts, CPU, Power supply and some EPROM cartridges. CPU is this kind: http://www.ebay.com/itm/TELEMECANIQUE-T ... 58c229e251The EPROM cartridges are this kind: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Telemecanique-T ... 0876402493 The label is torn off, but I think they are the 128K ones. I also have the programming console, which I was originally planning to keep for sentimental value. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Telemecanique-T ... 3f0fecc288

Let me know if you know anyone who might have an interest of this. The racks are still in a dumpster outside, so I can if necessary salvage the entire racks, or IO cards as needed. As these are pretty big, I prefer to not do it unless I know there is any interest. Equipment was pulled from a working machine 3-4 years ago. There are some Siemens S5 parts too.

Contact by PM if desired, and we'll take it from there. I don't have the parts in front of me, so I will update with complete part numbers later.

I'm debating on whether this belongs in the marketplace or not, but I'll give it a try.

EDIT: The dumpster is now gone, so no more parts available except those I have. It really makes me annoyed to see old working equipment thrown away like this, so if I had unlimited space, I would have brought it all home.

Yes for thinkpad enthusiasts it can be frustrating to see this disposal of still good equipment.
This equipment would have a working life of up to 20 years but the catch is when you try to purchase spares you find the series you are chasing has been discontinued and nothing is compatible.
Money is cheap at the moment and companies are encouraged to spend and then write it off on tax. The projects are all fully costed by the bean counters.
Keep your eye out for when these companies discard console equipment as their might be some computer bits and pieces to be had.
Although this is normally the Dell stuff like Precision 390 hardware. Still fun to play around with especially when it is been thrown away. It will also reinforce the quality of the old IBM hardware and most of the Lenovo gear.

shawross wrote:This equipment would have a working life of up to 20 years but the catch is when you try to purchase spares you find the series you are chasing has been discontinued and nothing is compatible.

For that reason many paint plant operators now source spares from ebay for old S5 plc systems that are usable as spares at sometimes incredible asking prices. I've a rare GEMA powdercoat line that'll stop next time the PLC dies as Siemens/GEMA cant source a spare. Just used the one shipped from eBay Canada last year and recirculated the operational risk analysis to the pointy eared ones again

That skip could have been a gold mine.

The Telemecanique equipment served us for 20 years, actually, but judging from the prices on eBay, it seems to be widely used and sought after still today. I also know that we ran into parts availability issues after about 15-16 years of use. It was eventually considered a too big of a risk for production to rely on equipment we had no chance to repair if it broke down, so we swapped them for new Telemecanique (Schneider) PLCs 3-4 years ago.

I also brought home a complete Siemens S5 100 rack. My 360Cs still has the software that I used to troubleshoot this very PLC back in the days, so if I could only find the interface cable, I could play around with it.

I am not too keen on putting the Telemecanique parts on eBay as I have no way to verify that they work. So I will most likely try to source some company here in Scandinavia who are able to verify that they work, and buy them from me. But the offer still stands for anyone who might see a use for these parts.

Actually most PLC hardware will last many years especially Siemens gear. My company had an S3 system which we were going to change to S5 so parts were more readily available. The Siemens ran 25 years, night and day in a dirty environment and refused to fail.
Items like power supplies and CPU cards should be valuable but as you say it is difficult if you can't guarantee the card. It is probably better to attempt to sell the gear to service technicians. They would also be able to tell you of maybe local companies still using the said hardware. The S5 gear should be valuable I would think.