Mesa combo recommendations?

I'm trying to sort out the best combination of Mesa cards for a large machine conversion.
I've been testing with a 5i25 + 7i77, and it seems to work well with the drives.

I'll need:

Multiple 5i25s or 6i25s?
Or 3X20 or 5i22 with multiple 50-pin daughtercards?

Machine details:

It's a dual-head 5-axis router with an old OSAI controller.
OSAI digital brushless servo drives.
9 movement axis (Y is dual servos) - XYYZABWCP
2 tool change servos - ML
2 AC head drives
1 AC table drive
lots of air solenoids
lots of air leaks...

A photo of it:
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2024756/stuff/CMS1000.jpg

Not sure what the best arrangement is but I suspect something like this:

5I23 PCI FPGA card (new 5I24 is an option but needs some minor support work in the driver)
7I53 12 channel encoder input card
7I44 8 Channel RS-422 interface
3x 7I70 48 channel field input
3x 7I83 6 channel +-10V output
2x 7I71 or 7I72 48 channel field output (sourcing (7I71) or sinking (7I72))

This would give you:

12 encoder inputs (TTL or DIFF)
144 24V inputs
96 24V outputs
18 +- 10V outputs/ with enables

Plus a fair amount of expandability ( two RS-422 ports on 7I53 and one unused 5I23 connector)


Another option is to replace the 7I44/7I53 with 2X 7I52

(This gives you 2 more RS-422 ports but requires cat 5 cables with 3.5 MM
terminal block on one end)

Thanks!

A few related questions -

Any possible / future LinuxCNC support for the 7i80HD or 7i80DB ?

Or - any other options that would enable the PC to be 100+ feet away from the interface cards?

There is experimental support for the 7I80HD/7I80DB and 7I76E
(the ubc3-7i80 branch) but mainstream support is still a little ways off

Are there firmware / config files for the 5i23 and/or 7i80HD available for the combo you recommended?

I don't absolutely need the pncconfig files for them, but that would be nice to get started with.

There may be a pinout file that matches but I doubt if there is a bitfile for the 5I23 and 7I80HD thats does what you need. I can make these bit files in a few minutes however.

Great!
I hope to get the cards this week and work on it this weekend.
Probably start out with the 5I23 and move to the 7I80HD once I've got more time to experiment.

Got the cards today, it's like Christmas!

Any word on getting the bitfile ready for both the 5I23 and 7I80HD ?

I'd like to test the whole combo with each board, if possible.

freeby.mesanet.com/12enc.zip has bitfiles for the 5I23 and 7I80hd-25

The 5i23 file has 10 sserial ports, 2 on the 7I53 (P2) and 8 on the 7I44 (P3)
the 7I80 has 18 (it can have 2x 7I44s)