7i76e was working, now CR1 LED does not go off

Hi All
First post here and hoping for some help.
My CNC, based on the 7i76E, was finally operating, but after a few days I got some stepper problems (it simply started to reverse direction in a random manner). But it got worse - the CR1 LED on the 7i76E turns on, and stays on, when I now start Linuxcnc 2.7. After power on, the LEDS go off (except CR8 and CR13), but when I then start linuxcnc CR1 comes ON.
I used the mesaflash tool to check the board. "mesaflash --device 7i76e --verify 7i76e_7i76x1D.bit" returns "Boot sector OK. Board configuration verified successfully"

I have attached my .hal and .ini if these could help

Martin

CR1 going on when running LinuxCNC usually means that the 7I76Es watchdog has bitten. Most likely this indicates a latency issue on your host PC.

You can check if the watchdog has bitten by inspecting the status bit with halshow, halmeter or halcmd:

halcmd show pin hm2_7i76e.0.watchdog.has-bit

That doesn't seem to be the problem in my case, as you can see from the attached output.
"halcmd show pin hm2_7i76e.0.watchdog.has-bit" shows "FALSE".

The CR1 LED doesn't light up some time after I start LinuxCNC, but immediately. It seems to turn on while linuxcnc i starting.

What version is LinuxCNC? some early versions trigger protocol errors which will also
Illuminate CR1

Linuxcnc is version 2.7.14
Although mesaflash verified the eeprom match the bit file " 7i76e_7i76x1D.bit" (I assume this is the default bit file, as I have not changed anything since I bought the board), will it make sense to boot with the fallback firmware?

2.7.14 is OK (the protocol errors are in early 2.7 versions)

I dont think its likely that the firmware is corrupted
( The FPGA does a CRC check of the firmware it loads )

Can you check that the 5V power is OK?
Not sure what else could cause this

One way to get a bit for information is this:
(after running LinuxCNC and with the red LED on)

mesaflash --device 7i76e --verbose

Here is the output from the "verbose" command.
I noticed one thing, though: When I apply power with an external 5V supply, but no field power to TB1, I can issue the "verbose" command and get the reply, as attached. I cannot launch Linuxcnc, as this requires field power.
If I then also apply 12V to the field bus on TB1, I can launch Linuxcnc, but the "mesaflash --device 7i76e --verbose" returns "No 7i76e device detected".
I seem to loose ethernet connection when the field power is attached

That's very odd since the field I/O section is completely isolated from the Ethernet part
Power supply issue of some kind?

Can you ping the card with field power applied?

I can ping and use mesaflash with both 5V and 12V field power as long as Linuxcnc is not running. But when I start linuxcnc, CR1 goes yellow and I am no longer allowed to ping from the terminal. With linuxcnc started I also get no replies when using mesaflash (it cannot find the 7i76e)

That's correct, access to the card is blocked when linuxCNC is running