Help choosing a good card setup

First things first. You have a 7i77 which is a card for servo's not steppers. Do you have servos or steppers?

You have a lot going on there. Start with the config that linuxcnc starts. upload the hal and ini for that configuration.
Will start from a known good position.

No I have steppers. 7i77 got mixed up in pncconf when selecting firmware under card type. You basically select 7i76 or 7i77 in various configurations.
For testing I must have selected 7i77.
I'm still just trying to get the OS and Mesa cards working properly before I move everything to the garage and start wiring it to the machine and do a proper setup.

I have the 7i92 which will connect to a Leadshine MX4660. (Not yet connected as it's in the garage)
The MX 4660 should drive all four steppers, 0-10V for the spindle, home switches and e-stop.
On the other port I will have the 7i74, connecting to 7i84. This will handle all in/out for the automatic tool changer plus all extras.

So still figuring out what firmware to use for this combo and how to set this up in pncconf (plus HAL) as a first step.

The hal in my previous post is will start LinuxCNC but with those errors. The ini is the same as before. Not at home so I can't get the files atm.

tommylight wrote:

You have latency problems and subsequently loosing connection, so get that sorted first.

Yes I'll start looking at that now.

Thanks for all help so far!

andypugh wrote:

Just to throw an alternative in to the pot... You could cut one end off of a parallel port cable and individually wire the MX4660 inputs to a 7i76 step/dir and IO pins.

I have now exchanged the 7i74 & 7i84 for a 7i76.
It's not clear to me on how to connect the step and direction pins. If you see on the screenshot below from both manuals, the 7i76 has got for output step+, step-, dir+, dir-; but the MX4660 only have one step and dir input per axis.
How do I connect the wires? Right now I've connected step to step+ and dir to dir+, and nothing to step- and dir-.

Latency issues are solved btw.



EDIT: Went through the manual again and found this section. Must have missed it first time...

STEP/DIR INTERFACE
The 7I76 provides five channels of step/dir interfa
ce with buffered 5V differential
signal pairs. Each differential pair consists of tw
o complementary 5V outputs. The
differential signals allows reliable signal transmi
ssion in noisy environments and can
directly interface with RS-422 line receivers. Step
motor drives with single ended inputs
connect to just one of the STEP and DIR signal outp
uts, that is either the STEP+/DIR+ or
STEP-/DIR- signals, with the unused signals left un
connected at the 7I76. The input
common signal on drives with single ended inputs co
nnects to the 7I76s GND or 5VP pins
depending on the drive type.

Edit: old info..

I've got the machine up and running now with most things working.
I ended up connecting everything except the stepper drives directly to the 7i76. (And steppers via Leadshine MX4660 ofc)
Main thing to solve next is my ATC, but I'll continue with that in another topic.
Thanks for all the help, and answering ,now, seemingly dumb questions!

Hi

I hope you can be informed for answear to your topic, i need some information about how you manage the spindle controller speed selection (potentiometer) with your mesa card ?

Best regards

alkabal wrote:

Hi

I hope you can be informed for answear to your topic, i need some information about how you manage the spindle controller speed selection (potentiometer) with your mesa card ?

Best regards

Hello,
I connected the analogue output of the card to the spindle speed control.