SR 489 GE Multilin

[Calinic]

Hello,

We currently have an engineer on site in Egypt commissioning two GE Multilin SR489 Generator Protection relays. He has experienced problems communicating with the relays from his laptop through the front RS232 port.
We have contacted GE helplines and checked everything they suggested with no success.

He has eventually managed to establish comms with the relays by using a laptop with Windows XP but with the compatiblilty setting changed to WIndows 2000/98/NT or 95.
He tried several laptops with Windows 2000 Professional operating system with no success.

I have successfully communicated with SR489s in the past using laptops with Windows 98.

It would appear there is a compatibilty issue with the 489 software and Windows operating systems.
If somebody experienced the above problem,please advise.

Thanks

 

[dpc]

By any chance, is the serial port on the laptop coming out of a USB port through a USB/Serial converter?

These can cause problems because the handshaking signals expected by the relay may not be present.

 

[gordonl]

Make sure the com ports aren't disabled in:
Control Panel
System
Device Manager
Ports

Also make sure you don't have some other device assigned to the port such as a modem.

 

[alehman]

I've had much frustration with with this problem on W2K. I haven't tried XP. It seems intermittent to me. I think it has to do with the way the GE softwre communicates with the RS232 port. The surest fix might be to set up your system for dual-boot and use Win98 for the GE software.