Basic Mesa Test

I am new to LinuxCNC. I have a machine that stopped working and I am trying to determine if my Mesa 5i25 card is bad.

I have been using the halrun command to create a simple program to turn an IO line on and off. The steps I took were to
loadrt host2mot
loadrt hm2_pci
loadrt threads
loadrt siggen

I created a thread to call siggen.0.upadate.
use setp hm2_5i25.0.gpio.000.is_output true

I used net to connect siggen.0.clock to a signal named clock and then to hm2_5i25.0.gpio.000.out

Started the thread. I see no output on the IO pin

if I run halmeter and look at signal hm2_5i25.0.gpio.000.out it goes between true and false every 1/2 second

Does this mean the actual IO line should also be going from high to low as I expected?

I don't think that will work without calls to the write function for the card in the thread

I added hm2_5i25.0.write_gpio to a faster thread than the sig gen. But that had no effect

I also noticed that as soon as I start the HAL threads, the outermost red LED on the mesa card lights up. When I exit HAL it turns off. Is this normal?

When I boot the PC the two red LEDs on the card go and off quite quickly.

No red light should be on once the card has initilaized at power up

I take that back, later firmware illuminates the red /INIT if the watchdog has bitten
so you should not expect I/O to work (since the WD bit)

ok, thanks. Now I just have to figure out how to kick the dog.