7i96 Working

I'm building my first plasma table and it's been going really well. I cut and machined all my plates and mounts floating head, built out a solid frame. run all the wiring and installed Linuxcnc and was totally defeated getting anything to work until I sit down and started reading the documentation and actually understanding what I was doing. and I still couldn't figure it out so I basically threw every solution I could find at once. I'm not sure which solution tipped things in my favor but it's working now

So if I can help a little I will. My install of the 7i96 config tool never worked so I moved on, I started by installing network-manager

sudo apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome
sudo apt-get remove wicd wicd-gtk

then logged out and back in

using a USB wifi adapter

www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00JDVRCI0/ref...00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

got it connected then right-clicked the network tool in the upper right and selected edit connections
found my wired connection and clicked the edit gear next to the + and - signs

go to the ipv4 tab select manual from the drop-down menu
click add
typed in the address*** 10.10.10.11 ***
press tab on my keyboard twice to move over to gateway
typed in the gateway as **** 10.10.10.1 ***
used my mouse to select the additional DNS area
typed in **** 10.10.10.1 ***

clicked the routes button and checked the box saying use the resources of the connection only

save logout out and back in

on the mesa board look for the jumper W5 and W6 the jumper on W5 should connect the 2 pins furthest away from the ethernet port and the w6 jumper should connect the 2 pins closest to the ethernet port, stagger them

now you can try pinging the card with

ping 10.10.10.10

it should return a number followed by the letters "ms" and repeat until you stop the program


now getting the board to communicate with your drivers,

I downloaded the support software

store.mesanet.com/index.php?route=produc...oduct&product_id=311

I installed unzip

sudo apt install unzip


I installed python 3.8

sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall

sudo apt-get install libreadline-gplv2-dev libncursesw5-dev libssl-dev \
libsqlite3-dev tk-dev libgdbm-dev libc6-dev libbz2-dev libffi-dev zlib1g-dev

cd /opt

sudo wget www.python.org/ftp/python/3.8.6/Python-3.8.6.tgz

sudo tar xzf Python-3.8.6.tgz

cd Python-3.8.6

sudo ./configure --enable-optimizations

sudo make altinstall

cd /opt

sudo rm -f Python-3.8.6.tgz

I installed mesa flash

sudo apt install libpci-dev pkg-config

git clone github.com/LinuxCNC/mesaflash.git

cd mesaflash

make

sudo make install

I unzipped the support software into my home folder named 7i96

I installed the dependencies for python

sudo apt install python3-pip python3-pyqt5 libpci-dev git

I tried to install the config tool

pip3 install git+https://github.com/jethornton/7i96.git

created a file in my home directory named .xsessionrc

by using

sudo nano .xsessionrc

copy this script into the editor

if [ -d $HOME/.local/bin ]; then
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
fi

ctrl x > yes > enter

logged out and back in

opened pncconfig tool and unselect the spindle control
use whatever settings your setup calls for

when you get to the board select area pick the 7i96
change the address to be 10.10.10.10
apply the changes and set up your axis motors
and you should be good I'm sorry if I'm not able to help anyone further than this I'm just documenting how I got things running so I'll answer what I can but solutions to individual problems I cant give, thank you for your time and best of luck

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!