7i92, can I use "STEP" outputs with no "DIR"?

Yes, if you are not using stepgens 0..3 on P2 for XYZA
you would need to enable 6 stepgens to get a free stepgen on P1
and therefore lose GPIO5 as an input

If you are not using a G540 and its chargepump,
there is likely better firmware for you application
(maybe one of the 5ABOB firmwares would be closer)

>(maybe one of the 5ABOB firmwares would be closer)

OK, back to the dumb question- where do I find these pinouts? I don't have this on my Windows PC and I can't find anything to actually download that has the pinout

www.mesanet.com/software/parallel/7i92.zip

Thanks!

I did get the setup booting with rotary. Now, I'm stuck on homing. I didn't plan to home the A axis at all, one starting position is as good as another. There's no homing switch for it.

I copied most of my setup from other axes, so it's not surprising- it keeps rolling the axis, searching for the home switch which doesn't exist.

I figured I could add a line to see the homing switch net to be equal to 1 all the time, but a regular homing cycle has that backing-off step and that won't play nice with a fake switch input tied to 1. So maybe not.

What's the elegant way handle homing on a system like this?

No joy. Set all that to zero and it still tries to home the A axis.

Enclosed

I did quite a few variations on the ini file.  HOME_SEQUENCE =  0, -1, 4...

This is still LinuxCNC 2.7.4 BTW.  Upgrading to a new box soon, I don't think this prob is version-specific

Odd note.  The normal sequence was Z, Y, then X1/X2.
In all cases, A-axis will start turning after Y.  It starts turning A-axis concurrently as X1/X2 homing begins, regardless of what's in HOME_SEQUENCE, which I find odd.  Even if I wanted no homing at all, if it DOES start an unwanted home, it should still use the SEQUENCE and it doesn't.   

It will keep turning slowly, indefinitely.  I hit arrow keys and it says something about can't jog while homing, but this does halt the motion of A-axis and allows jogging.  The A-axis is then left unhomed and we can't enter interpreter mode. 

Any ideas? I'm stuck. I've tried doing exactly as described with no luck, and tried every meaningful iteration I can think of.

It's notable that it's fixing itself alongside the X1/X2 axis as if its HOME_SEQUENCE=2 regardless of what the ini fil specifies. It's making me wonder if the prob isn't somewhere else entirely.

X1/X2 is unusual in that it's got two motors, but that shouldn't make any difference.

This is version specific
joint axes X1/X2 needs version 2.8
I suspect your A is reading the setup for a linear axis.