developing drivers for custom boards

I have yet to convince the NetMos to read from the port. I have the DDR set in DCR as described in the datasheet and here by Jon.

Thanks for all the help, but this is now a dead end for me and am exploring new avenues

btvpimill wrote:

I have yet to convince the NetMos to read from the port. I have the DDR set in DCR as described in the datasheet and here by Jon.

Thanks for all the help, but this is now a dead end for me and am exploring new avenues

Here's the code I use in the hal_ppmc.c driver to set the port to write:
/* set port direction to output */
rtapi_outb(0x04,CONTROLPORT(port_addr));

And this sets it to read mode :
/* set port direction to input */
rtapi_outb(0x24,CONTROLPORT(port_addr));

CONTROLPORT is the I/O port address 2 higher than the data port,
so standard would be 0x37A.

And, of course, the NETMOS may JUST NOT WORK! If the handshaking is not
working, the CPU may just blaze ahead and totally ignore that it needs to stop
and wait for the input operation to receive the data.

Jon

Now I have a question about

motion.spindle-speed-out

This is a float, so I assume my "pin" in my driver must also be a float. (since it yelled at me when I tried to net a float to a u32)
I don't need or want a float, so I need to do something to the number to prepare it for sending to my hardware. I am sending 2 bytes to convey spindle speed (this will give me 0-20000 rpm)

Does someone know off the top of their head what the format for the float is? or can I just cast it as an INT and it will become correct?

the HAL component looks pretty cool, think I will give that a go. Thanks again Andy

Andy, that component does the trick.

I learned the hard way that even built in parallel ports are not all the same. I was pulling my hair out over the last 2 days trying to figure out what was wrong with my hardware. I was losing steps, but could not figure out why. Turns out it was the motherboard/parallel port. I swapped that board (about 3 years old) with one that was only 1-2 years old, and everything works perfect.

Now the problem is that is a discontinued model. So then I tried it with a 2 month old computer that I bought to try since I can't by the other - it won't even do EPP, even when set in BIOS and doing all the bit setting in my driver.

Oh well, off to look for another computer to use until I can get this to work with my 5i25.

If anyone knows of an mini ITX with built in LPT, and can confirm it will work in EPP mode, I would love to hear.

A little back on topic here, easy question:

How the heck do I send a message from my driver to Axis? I mean something like what we see when we hit a limit switch?

I can detect communication errors between LinuxCNC and my board. Right now I RTAPI_PRINT a message with the error. The problem is this is not seen. what I really want to do is have an Estop ( prolly I can manage that), and a custom message like we we get for limits and such. Otherwise we will scratch our heads as to why we just got the Estop