7i74 only has 2 ports live

I've got a 7i92 + 7i77 + 7i74 config

Then I've got a 7i70, 7i71, and 7i83 attached to the 7i74

For some oddball reason only two ports are active on the 7i74, the other six don't do anything. My hal config file is setting all the channels to mode 0. I would suspect a firmware issue, but I suppose it could be a config file problem somewhere.....

Can you post your hal file?

Also the results of:

mesaflash --device 7i92 --addr [your_IP_address] --readhmid > mypinout.txt

Here you go



and this is the readhmid

the readhmid file is empty

Are you sure you are using ports 0,1,2,3,4,5 etc because the 7I77_7I74 config does only have 6 ports available (0..5)

Sorry about, just edited the post, and added the content. Try it now

I took a 7i70 and a 7i71 board, and plugged them into each port in turn. Ports 4 and 5 work perfectly fine, none of the rest do.

Of all the headwhanging problems........I happened to brush against the ribbon cable between the 7i92 and the 7i74, and the connector fell out!! No wonder it only partially worked. Fixed the cable and 6 ports are working now

On another note, I'm not using the stepgens, and don't plan to. Can we remove a couple of those and activate the last two ports on the 7i74?

There should be no stepgens in that config
If mesaflash with the readhmid option shows stepgens then this is not the correct bitfile

The correct bitfile is:

freeby.mesanet.com/7i92_7i77_7i74D.bit

Of course. You're right, there would be no stepgens in that bitfile. Is there anything else that could be removed so the last two 7i74 ports could be enabled?

No, I don't think any more than 6 can fit though i don't think I have tried 7
The 7I92s FPGA is pretty small and the existing 7I77_7I74 configuration already has:

3 CPUs ( Ethernet, Sserial0 Sserial1 ) Each with RAM/ROM and I/O decoding
9 UARTS (for the 9 sserial channels)
6 encoder counters
DPLL

A 7I80DB-25 can accommodate 2x 7I77s and 2x 7I74 Sserial channels but it has a FPGA ~3x the size of the 7I92s

It's not a big deal, I was just thinking of a couple years down the road if I need to add something and can't figure out why the last two ports are dead, but I guess we'll go over that bridge then