ABB 3BSE018137R1 CI858-1 Card Motherboard – Communication Interface for AC 800M / 800xA Systems

Product Overview

The ABB 3BSE018137R1 CI858-1​ is the printed circuit board assembly—commonly referred to in spare-parts practice as the CI858-1 card motherboard—that forms the electrical and mechanical heart of ABB’s CI858 Communication Interface. The CI858 is a fieldbus communication module for the ABB AC 800M high-integrity (HI) controller family and the extended Automation 800xA (800xA) distributed control system, and the ABB 3BSE018137R1 CI858-1​ is the bare-board variant supplied for repair, exchange, or build purposes, distinct from the cased, boxed, and baseplate-equipped configurations. In plain terms, the ABB 3BSE018137R1 CI858-1​ is the board that lets an 800M controller speak PROFIBUS DP—and, in derivative CI858 builds, PROFINET IO and other fieldbus protocols—to drives, remote I/O, smart instruments, PLCs, HMIs, and safety controllers, without the controller CPU having to understand a single byte of the bus timing.

The ABB 3BSE018137R1 CI858-1​ mounts on the TP858 baseplate (ordering code 3BSE018144R1), which provides the 24 V DC supply, the controller backplane connection, the D-sub 9-pin PROFIBUS socket, and the mechanical DIN-rail fixing. The board itself carries the protocol ASIC/FPGA, the galvanic-isolation barrier, the status-LED decode logic, and the configuration-store devices. As a PROFIBUS DP master or slave (class 1/2 capable, depending on firmware and system role), it sustains the 12 Mbit/s maximum line rate and performs automatic baud-rate detection, so a replaced ABB 3BSE018137R1 CI858-1​ re-acquires its network within seconds of being seated, provided the GSD file and station address are unchanged.

Within the 800xA architecture, the value of the ABB 3BSE018137R1 CI858-1​ is that it moves the real-time bus burden off the controller’s main processor. The AC 800M HI CPU continues to execute the control task, while the CI858 handles token passing, telegram assembly, retry, watchdog, and diagnostic accumulation. The result is deterministic scan behavior even on a loaded 30-device PROFIBUS segment. The motherboard also preserves diagnostic transparency: every CI858-1 surfaces station status, telegram error counters, slave diagnostic data, and module health to the 800xA engineering and alarm hierarchy, so a field technician sees “device 17, checksum error, 14:02:11” rather than “bus fault.” For a plant carrying CI858-1 as a critical spare, the ABB 3BSE018137R1 CI858-1​ is the difference between a four-hour bus reconstruction and a five-minute board swap.

Technical Specifications