Texas Instruments is marking 30 years in the UK with the launch of two families of programmable controllers, the Series 305 and Series 405. Texas claims that the new products represent a major attempt to recover the programmable controller market which the company used to dominate, before losing out to GE Fanuc Automation and a host of other rivals such as Siemens, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, and Telemecanique Electronique SA. The company believes that the new controllers will undercut these companies, and it is offering them at UKP130 per processor board. They are programmed in Machine Stage Language, MSL, as opposed to the standard Relay Logic Ladder, RLL, and when mixed with Relay Logic, will provide embedded Grafcet reprogramming capability. The Machine Stage Language has 167 instructions which reduce the amount of programming and code time, and programming diagrams are 99% compatible with Sequential Function Charts. The controllers are manufactured in Japan by Toyota-owned Koyo, the company that built GE’s Series One, and Texas says the 305 is an exact replacement to the rival offering, since programs, modules, and parts are completely interchangeable. It has up to 168 InputOutputs, 3.7Kb CMOS RAM, with an optional 3.7Kb EPROM, and scan times vary between 8mS and 36mS, depending on the program. The more powerful 405 family has a scan time of 0.49mS/K, and 8K-word memory CMOS and EEPROM cartridges. It provides colour LEDs, 96 error descriptive messages, and 256 Input-Output points in a 19 rack. The low-end 305 is available as from October, and the 405 from the beginning of April 1990. Texas is planning to launch a single chip implementation of the boards within the next two years, and says it will be considerably cheaper than anything currently on offer.
