The IC697BEM741 FIP Bus controller is a dual-channel bus controller for the GE Fanuc Series 90-70 FIP Bus controller system. This FIP Bus controller allows the GE IC697 PLCs to connect to the 1.0 Megabit FIP or the WorldFIP (EN50170) Fieldbus network. The IC697BEM741 FIP Bus controller can accommodate up to 128 field devices, including a field control I/O module (using the FIP Bus interface unit), FIP field bus network interfaced Series 90-70 and Series 90-30 PLCs, Series 90-30 I/O racks (using FIP remote I/O scanner modules), and generic devices such as bus-interfaced general-purpose computers (using the FIP interface module). The IC697BEM741 Bus controller can serially scan I/O devices on the FIP bus and I/O data is transferred to the CPU at every completed iterated scan. During a scan, the IC697BEM741 Bus controller independently searches for any connected remote device, broadcasts the output data from the PLC to connected devices, allows for the transmission of time-dependent messages from the field devices, and receives diagnostics messages from the connected field devices.

The GE Fanuc IC697BEM741 FIP Bus controller occupies a single slot in the GE IC697 PLC VME Integrator rack (the IC697CHS782 or the IC697CHS783 rack). The IC697BEM741 FIP Bus Controller can be configured with the Windows-based Logicmaster Series 90-70 programming software or the CIMPLICITY Control 90 programming software. The IC697BEM741 Bus controller comes with 6 LED indicators on the front panel. The top 2 LED lights (the "MODULE OK" and "RUN" LEDs) show the module's operation status, while the bottom 4 LEDs indicate the communication status on the device. The IC697BEM741 Bus controller also has a pushbutton directly under the LED indicators for local resetting. It comes with a 15-pin serial connector that connects to a PC for upgrading operating firmware, and it also has 2 FIP Bus 9-pin connectors (Channels 1 and 2) for connecting to 2 FIP Busses.