Retrofitting a 1986 Maho MH400E

The EXE is in the original box and there was when I bought the masinu and the box in front was with some relays that overlapped the two-way signals as if it was a two-way machine. Now i did not work with linuxcnc I used a lot of MACH3 now I have to slowly resell this.
Greeting

Hi guys,

Started working on connecting the Mesa parts to the machine. Here's a problem. The 5i25 is in the PCI slot, and the 7i84, 7i74, 7i73 are all connected to a 5V DC PSU, like Mark did. The power LEDs indicate that power is being supplied to all the cards. There's a flat signal cable connecting the 5i25 and the 7i74 (IDC26 to DB25). The 7i84 and 7i73 are connected via RJ45 patch cables to the 7i74.

However, when we test the pins using the show pin command in the Linux terminal, we only get 5i25 pins, like in the attached text file. In addition, regardless of whether the 7i77 is supplied power from the 5i25 or from the 5V PSU, the pins shown by the terminal remain the same. The EXE card and encoders are not yet connected. All jumpers have been set accordingly to the power supply. We tested a few combinations of power inputs (FPGA and 5V PSU), but Linux always shows the same signals. Is there anything missing? Any ideas? Maybe the DIY signal cables are bad?

The picture shows the LEDs on all cards when power is on and the PC is running.

1. The 7I84 will need field power to work ( the 7I73 just needs cable power )

2. When you add a 7I74 to a 7I77 config, this adds a second ssserial host port (port 1).
This port needs to be enabled with a sserial_port_1=00000000 token in the config
string ( the 00000000 sets all 8 channels of port_1 to mode 0, you may want to adjust this later )

I didn't feel like mucking around with that tool length sensor troubleshooting, so I finished the drag engraver. Pretty unusual feeling for me to actually finish a project, even if it is only a mini one.




Didn't get around to testing it yet.
Mark

PCW, are you saying that I should use PNCConf to make a hal file for the 7i77 and then add the 7i74 manually using that line?

I'm asking because I updated the 5i25 with a firmware that's named 7i77_7i74 (extracted from the 5i25.zip file, containing all the available standard firmware from Mesa), and after copying the files to the appropriate folders so that the wizard allows me to select them I can't seem to get a config going with that setup. In fact, any setup with a 7i74 causes PNCConf to parse multiple errors (e.g two 7i74s, or the reverse 7i74_7i77), I can't move on to the next step in the config.

This behaviour does not occur with any of the other firmwares, all of them populate their respecitve lists and allow me to continue with the configuration. I'm kind of confused.

So should I select a different firmware and then change the hal file manually to include the 7i74 (which connects to a 7i84 and 7i73 via patch cables)?

BTW, all the cards apart from the 5i25 are using field power from a PSU, all the diodes seem to work, and a multimeter confirms every card gets its required 5V. The show pin command now shows some 7i77 pins in addition to the 5i25 ones, but nothing from the 7i84. Please note that I haven't yet created a config with the wizard because of the problem described above.

Very nice work Mark! Don't go saying you never complete a project, I mean this retrofit is a massive project (and the control panel was another project in and of itself).

The great benefit of upgrading the machine over a long period of time like you did is that you could slowly put together all the required pieces of knowledge. I'm finding it very difficult, despite having your instructions and the manuals, to find the necessary bits of info that are needed to overcome each hurdle along the way. It all seems scattered across various files and forum posts.