7I96 vs 7i76e

I am building up a machine with a lenovo USFF M90P

The PC will NOT run the mesa 5i25. Something to do with PCI power levels. I can get a PSI Ethernet card for it, so i can run one of the mesa Ethernet cards and still have networking. The PCI card is realtek and the on board Ethernet is intel. I assume its safest to use the intel one for linuxcnc.

The machine will have 4 axes, a tool changing spindle with static tray, and an mpg wheel, limits, and not a whole lot else.
Would i be better off just getting the 7i76e, or will the 7i96 do everything it can do with less IO? The main thing i don't see on the 7i96 is MPG support "yet". Is this on its way soon? (as in, a few months).

I plan on trying to stuff the mesa card INSIDE the lenovo machine to make this machine "cabinetless" so the smaller board is helpful. Cheap is also good

Thanks

You can use a software MPG counter on the 7I96 inputs (a hardware MPG counter is already available in the firmware but still needs driver support)

Note that this will eat into the rather limited 11 inputs on the 7I96 unless you use the (un-isolated/unprotected) expansion port pins

OK, so i am probably best using the 7i76. I wonder if i can stuff that in the lenovo case.. seems unlikely. I only really have the space where the slim DVD drive was.

HA, well i haven't opened the PC in a while..

www.megaram.hu/termekek/1100/Lenovo-Thin...er-nelkul-38397D.jpg

It's a full sized cd drive. LOTS of room

PCW wrote:

You can use a software MPG counter on the 7I96 inputs (a hardware MPG counter is already available in the firmware but still needs driver support)

Note that this will eat into the rather limited 11 inputs on the 7I96 unless you use the (un-isolated/unprotected) expansion port pins

Peter, I think I saw elsewere that there is now driver support in V 2.9. Can you confirm?

Also can you configure the 7i96 with just one MPG?

What are the numbers for the pins that are converted to MPG?

Yes, the INM module that provides the MPG inputs is supported in LinuxCNC 2.9
The standard INM module has 4 MPGs (you can use as many as you like, they do
not interfere in any way with normal input use)

The inm module also provides hardware filtering/debouncing on the inputs

Standard 7I96 firmware maps the INM pins to GPIO pins 1:1 so the MPG inputs
are the first 8 pins (inputs 0..7)