Retrofitting a 1986 Maho MH400E

Note that the 7I74 is a passive device, so "7i74" will not show up anywhere,
but all the connected daughter cards should show up if the second sserial port is enabled.

The 7i74 won't have pins available will it. You probably need to connect the 7i784 to it then, and see if 7i84 i/o pins become available.

So I discovered a 2012 forum topic on the subject of configurations and this led me to Big John T's 7i77 tutorial configuration and his sample configurations. Despite being the most obvious option for a newb, PNCConf is probably not the way to go at all. The plot thickens...

Yes, I was looking for 7i84 pins, I'd read about the 7i74 being passive before. I unplugged the other cards and left the 7i77 to try the sample configs I found, but LinuxCNC wouldn't start with them. So instead I got into PNCConf again, selected a 7i77x2 firmware per the 5i25 manual and finally it allowed me to go through all the options. Now I'm going to set up what I can and then modify the config files to enable the 7i74 and the relay FPGA and pendant modules. Then I'll start wiring up components.

EDIT: sorry for the flurry of posts, but after unplugging the Philips I'm on a one-way street to get this going ASAP (there's a bunch of work waiting). I had a programmer buddy over the weekend to help but now that he's back at work I'm feeling lonesome in my workshop and want to exchange ideas all the time

Okay, I can't get LCNC to start with either John's sample config or the config I just made in PNCConf. I'm attaching a file with the log that came up when I tried to open my config. (The text formatting is broken because I copied the file to a Windows machine; it looks good in Linux). Does anyone know what the problem is?

You'll get there. This is the first block of my HAL:

You probably want to comment out Matrix_KB, estop_latch MH400E_gearbox for starters.

#*******************
# HAL COMPONENTS
#*******************
loadrt trivkins
loadrt [EMCMOT]EMCMOT servo_period_nsec=[EMCMOT]SERVO_PERIOD num_joints=[TRAJ]AXES
# Driver for MESA 5i25/7i77/7i84 interface cards
loadrt hostmot2
loadrt hm2_pci config=" num_encoders=3 num_pwmgens=0 num_stepgens=0 sserial_port_0=300xxx"
setp hm2_5i25.0.watchdog.timeout_ns 5000000
loadrt pid names=pid.x,pid.y,pid.z
loadrt mux16 names=jogincr,foincr,mvoincr
#5x5 matrix in scan generation mode to interface the user display panel buttons
loadrt matrix_kb config=5x5s names=maho_panel
#Gearbox Control
loadrt mh400e_gearbox
#external E-stop
loadrt estop_latch

addf hm2_5i25.0.read servo-thread
addf motion-command-handler servo-thread
addf motion-controller servo-thread
addf pid.x.do-pid-calcs servo-thread
addf pid.y.do-pid-calcs servo-thread
addf pid.z.do-pid-calcs servo-thread
addf jogincr servo-thread
addf foincr servo-thread
addf mvoincr servo-thread
addf hm2_5i25.0.write servo-thread
addf maho_panel servo-thread
addf mh400e-gearbox servo-thread
addf estop-latch.0 servo-thread

See the line "encoders =3", that is what Andy was referring to.

I just tested the drag engraver. It works really well in aluminium.


Mark

Okay, so I can edit the number to 6 and see if it works. Thanks a lot guys!

Hello Christian
I am an german User and i need a Dokumentation for the Trk6. Van you sendet me this
Tank you very mich
Harald