Allen-Bradley 2711-K10C8 PanelView 1000 Replacement HMI for PLC-5 and SLC 500 DH+ Networks

Product Overview

The Allen-Bradley 2711-K10C8​ is a PanelView 1000 Standard Operator Terminal from Rockwell Automation’s Bulletin 2711 family, the largest and most capable of the classic keypad-only HMIs that carried PLC-5 and SLC 500 lines through the 1990s and 2000s. It is built around a 10.4-inch active-matrix color TFT with a 640 × 480 VGA active area of 211 × 158 mm, rendering screens, alarm lists, trend mini-graphs, and multi-language text in 16 colors under firmware 4.xx (expanding to 256 colors on the later 7.xx firmware builds). The Allen-Bradley 2711-K10C8​ is a keypad terminal: no touch overlay, no calibration drift, and no soft-key ambiguity — just a stainless-steel-domed membrane carrying F1–F16 programmable function keys plus a numeric and cursor cluster, each rated for two million actuations.

The defining character of the 2711-K10C8​ sits in the communication digit. In the positional catalog string, K​ = Standard keypad, 10​ = 10.4-inch class, C​ = color TFT, and 8​ = Data Highway Plus (DH+) with a dedicated RS-232 port wired as a printer/output channel. That is a meaningful distinction from the C3/C9 DH-485 cousins and from the C16 DF1 unit: the Allen-Bradley 2711-K10C8​ joins a DH+ trunk as a native node, the same open-token network the PLC-5/20, SLC 5/04, and their 1771-KG/CAT cabling already ride. Application transfer, however, does not travel the DH+ port on this variant — it is handled through the configuration path, while the DB-9 RS-232 is strictly a printer port. That division is deliberate, and forgetting it is the most common first mistake when a replacement is rushed in.

In the automation stack the terminal is a display and entry device, not a logic solver. It maps PLC data-table addresses to screen objects, accepts operator writes on the function keys and numeric pad, and timestamps alarms through a battery-backed real-time clock. Memory is split 1008 KB nonvolatile flash for the PanelBuilder32 application, objects, text, and bitmaps, with 310 KB of runtime workspace. An ATA memory card and the 2711-NMCC​ retainer let a shift tech reload the resident image without a laptop, which is the recovery path that separates a five-minute fix from a midnight call-out.

Lifecycle is the governing fact: the PanelView 1000 platform is discontinued, and the Allen-Bradley 2711-K10C8​ now exists in the spares economy. The intelligent purchase is therefore a unit whose Series, firmware build, and DH+ transceiver have actually been exercised in loop test, not a listing that only matches the printed catalog number. A firmware-matched 2711-K10C8​ restores the original screens and F-key legends verbatim, protecting the sunk investment in every PanelBuilder32 project still running on the DH+ network.

Technical Specifications