Intel D525MW motherboard EPP issue with Mesa 7i43

Hi All,

I surfed several hours but without success to find a solution for my problem.
My setup is:

Intel D525MW motherboard, in BIOS parport set to EPP, but of course that's not true, in reality it's SPP

Mesa 7i43-U-4 card connected to the parport of motherboard
Jumpers on 7i43:
1,2,3 UP
4,5 DOWN
6, 7 UP

Ubuntu 10.04
Linuxcnc 2.5.1

Kernel identifies the parport like this:
parport0: PC-style at 0x378, irq 7 [PCSPP]

And finally when I start linuxcnc the erorr message as follows:
only relevant parts included..

Print file information:
RUN_IN_PLACE=no
LINUXCNC_DIR=
LINUXCNC_BIN_DIR=/usr/bin
LINUXCNC_TCL_DIR=/usr/lib/tcltk/linuxcnc
LINUXCNC_SCRIPT_DIR=
LINUXCNC_RTLIB_DIR=/usr/realtime-2.6.32-122-rtai/modules/linuxcnc
LINUXCNC_CONFIG_DIR=
LINUXCNC_LANG_DIR=/usr/share/linuxcnc/tcl/msgs
INIVAR=inivar
HALCMD=halcmd
LINUXCNC_EMCSH=/usr/bin/wish8.5
LINUXCNC - 2.5.1-28-gea820a7
Machine configuration directory is '/home/bj/linuxcnc/configs/Mesa_7i43'
Machine configuration file is 'Mesa_7i43.ini'
INIFILE=/home/bj/linuxcnc/configs/Mesa_7i43/Mesa_7i43.ini
PARAMETER_FILE=linuxcnc.var
TASK=milltask
HALUI=halui
DISPLAY=axis
Starting LinuxCNC...
Starting LinuxCNC server program: linuxcncsvr
Loading Real Time OS, RTAPI, and HAL_LIB modules
Starting LinuxCNC IO program: io
Starting HAL User Interface program: halui
Shutting down and cleaning up LinuxCNC...
Running HAL shutdown script
Killing task linuxcncsvr, PID=2608


Kernel message information:
[ 554.695629] I-pipe: Domain RTAI registered.
[ 554.695643] RTAI[hal]: <3.8.1> mounted over IPIPE-NOTHREADS 2.6-03.
[ 554.695649] RTAI[hal]: compiled with gcc version 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) .
[ 554.695731] RTAI[hal]: mounted (IPIPE-NOTHREADS, IMMEDIATE (INTERNAL IRQs DISPATCHED), ISOL_CPUS_MASK: 0).
[ 554.695736] PIPELINE layers:
[ 554.695741] fb493e20 9ac15d93 RTAI 200
[ 554.695746] c085cb20 0 Linux 100
[ 554.742133] RTAI[malloc]: global heap size = 2097152 bytes, <BSD>.
[ 554.742440] RTAI[sched]: IMMEDIATE, MP, USER/KERNEL SPACE: <with RTAI OWN KTASKs>, kstacks pool size = 524288 bytes.
[ 554.742452] RTAI[sched]: hard timer type/freq = APIC/12500368(Hz); default timing: periodic; linear timed lists.
[ 554.742460] RTAI[sched]: Linux timer freq = 250 (Hz), TimeBase freq = 1800077000 hz.
[ 554.742465] RTAI[sched]: timer setup = 999 ns, resched latency = 2943 ns.
[ 554.742599] RTAI[usi]: enabled.
[ 554.898232] RTAI[math]: loaded.
[ 555.036052] hm2: loading Mesa HostMot2 driver version 0.15
[ 555.044713] hm2_7i43: loading HostMot2 Mesa 7i43 driver version 0.3
[ 555.046846] hm2_7i43: /DONE is not low after CPLD reset!
[ 555.046909] hm2_7i43.0: firmware: requesting hm2/7i43-4/SVST4_6.BIT
[ 555.051248] hm2/hm2_7i43.0: board has FPGA '3s200tq144', but the firmware in hm2/7i43-4/SVST4_6.BIT is for FPGA '3s400tq144'
[ 555.051267] hm2_7i43.0: board at (ioaddr=0x0378, ioaddr_hi=0x0778, epp_wide ON) not found!
[

I assumed that there was/is a workaround for this bug, but the newest linuxcnc seems not connecting to 7i43.
I tried pico-system's pcisetup program too, but no change.

When I selected different firmware, the error message is different but 7i43 still doesn't work.


Did I miss something?
BIOS upgrade can help?

Thank you for assistance in advance.

Regards:
James

If the 7I43 power in OK and its jumpered right you should get three LED on at powerup, 1 yellow power LED and 2 red LEDs (/INIT and /DONE)

If the cable is correct and the port is truly in EPP mode the 7I43 should work.

Note the the D525 BIOs is broken also to the extent that the port address is not settable either...

Thanks for the quick help!

"If the 7I43 power in OK ...." solved the problem: I double checked all settings, and read the manual once again. I forgot to plug in the USB cable between the 7i43 and MB.... Sorry for such obvious mistake..
Now I have one nice yellow and two red LEDs and linuxcnc starts correctly.



BTW: the kernel still reports SPP mode in dmesg. Should I understand that hostmot corrects the wrong BIOS setup or is it done by linuxcnc?


Thanks Peter!

Regards:
James

The current 7I43 driver always tries to set the port mode to EPP (to work-around problems like the Intel BIOS)
and also for those few PCI add-in parallel port card that actually support EPP.

Its probably not harmful in general to set the mode to EPP for even software bare parallel port
uses but I dont think LinuxCNC does this. This also is an issue for some breakouts like the G540 that needs high drive on pin 16. This often has only a weak pullup in SPP mode but is push-pull in EPP mode, so its arguable that LinuxCNC should always set the port to EPP mode