Okay, so I decided to power up my new robot controller and set the above settings. Now I have a real PLC and real robot and the PNS1-8 bits are changing as I change the PNS byte in the PLC as expected, this a great news. Also I see the PNS strobe. Yes!!
I found something odd but still not a solution to my virtual robot. In Roboguide, Tools>Options> Teach Pendant selection, check "Use the physical iPendant..." and leave my virtual pendant up. Then trigger a PNS Strobe, I finally get an ACK1-8 and SNACK pulse once in awhile, not on every PNS Strobe. The UI PNS1-8 bits still don't turn on. I would love to get most of the commissioning completed virtually before stopping production to replace the old Kawasaki robots with Fanuc and just touchup the positions, to reduce downtime.