A longwall support control for controlling the movements of longwall
support units in the longwall of a mine that includes a central control
system and a plurality of control units, of which a separate control unit
(mining shield control device) is locally and operationally associated to
each longwall support unit. The mining shield control devices connect to
the central control system and to one another via two bus lines, through
which each of the mining shield control devices can be called up for
inputting a control command from the central control system or an
adjacent mining shield control device. The identical second bus line
(parallel bus) permits retransmitting to the adjacent mining shield
control device, incoming signals that do not store a code word assigned
to the respectively addressed mining shield control device.