Software

Retro project: DATCON DT510 & ModBUS/ASCII & RS-232C & Turbo Pascal & DOS

I am trying to query a 24-year-old, scrapped power meter via RS-232C port with ModBUS/ASCII protocol. And to be a challenge: without external ready-made functions, with direct hardware access, in real mode, with Turbo Pascal, on an old DOS machine.

The device to be tested was manufactured by the Hungarian DATCON Ipari Elektronikai Kft. in the 90s. The company was founded even before the regime change, in 1982, and has been working in the field of industrial electronics ever since.
The device type is DT510. This is a single-phase electrical power meter. Made in several versions, this uses RS-232C serial connection and ModBUS/ASCII protocol for communication. In addition, it has three configurable analog outputs.
The connection of the device is included in its datasheet.
The device can be set with its own setting program via serial port.

Measured values

  • Urms: effective voltage in V
  • Irms: effective current in A
  • P: active power in W
  • Q: reactive power in VAr
  • S: apparant power in VA
  • Wp: active power demand in Wh
  • Wq: reactive power demand in VArh
  • Ws: apparant power demand in VAh
  • cosφ: power factor
  • TPF: technical power factor
The program was written in Turbo Pascal. The source code consists of the main program and three additional units:
Unserial.pas: this unit contains the routines that manage the serial port. The port is managed by the BIOS INT 14H interrupt. It uses the serial port interrupt to indicate received data and to read it.
Unmodbus.pas: this unit is responsible for data transfer according to the ModBUS/ASCII protocol. Only reading the holding register (Function code: 3) was implemented in the unit, because the others were not needed now. The unit stores the values of all possible (9999) holding registers. These can be referred to by the register number. It also includes the Longitudinal Redundancy Check (LRC) calculator.
Undt510.pas: this unit is responsible for converting the received raw values into real values.

Download

name version OS arch. type note
program with source v0.1 DOS i386 zip  
setting program of the DT510   DOS i386 zip  
datasheet of the DT510       pdf  
Github git clone https://github.com/pozsarzs/getdt510.git

 Hackster Project page on Hackster.io

Stand with Ukraine!