Linux will not recognize my BOB no matter WHAT I try to do

Hey everybody,

I am brand new to joining the forum, but have been reading posts like CRAZY for the last 2 weeks. There is a lot of knowledge in here and it seems like a few other people have (more or less) had the same issue that I have, but NONE of the solutions that worked for anyone else have worked for me. I started with Linux a little over 2 weeks ago when I downloaded and installed Buster 2.8.0 on an old desktop tower that had the original Windows 7 operating system on it. I had originally begun communicating with the CNC machine I had just finished building using and Arduino Uno and Universal G-Code Sender in Windows over the USB port and I was VERY happy at the way the machine performed, but it was only in 3 axis. I need the 4th axis as rotary to do what I am planning on doing with the machine, so that unfortunately required a slightly more capable setup than an Arduino running in USG.

ENTER: LinuxCNC....... and ALL of my headache for the last 2 weeks +..... Originally, I didn't have a parallel port for my computer so I tried using a USB to parallel adapter cable.... Yeah... See all 9,000,000 post on this prior..... After purchasing a true, legitimate DB25 to DB25 cable and a PCIe adapter card and plugging them in to my generic, Chisneeze BOB, I was ECSTATIC to find out that I had motion control in all 4 axis and could jog them around as I wish using Stepconf. I was trying to figure out how to set up my limit switches when the universe imploded on me. I'm not exactly sure what happened to cause everything following, but the best I can narrow it down to would be that I guess maybe I had disconnected the BOB, rewired a few pins, and reconnected it while the computer was still running??? All of a sudden, I had no more communication between the parport and the BOB. I sincerely have ZERO idea what happened. I couldn't reestablish communication, so I tried reinstalling Linux from the CD, which made my ENTIRE computer crash SO hard I had to have Best Buy just wipe it completely and reinstall Windows to try and start again from scratch. They installed Windows 10 instead of Windows 7, which caused me to have to apply literally 18 driver updates to the system to get it to function operationally. Not sure if/how many of those updates compounded my already immediately compounding problem... After 3 additional re-installations of the Windows 7 IOS (becasue Mach 3 kept crashing it), and another 2 re-installations of Linux, I was FINALLY able to get back to the point where I had full command of the computer again and could dual boot to either Windows or Linux. yay. good times. Back to the parport issue.... In my troubleshooting research, I had figured out that I had a WCH 382 chipset in the parallel port adapter I had purchased, which, again..... see prior posts... (what KILLS me is that it was actually WORKING before it didn't... How is the WCH 382 chipset KNOWN to not work with Linux, yet I honestly had the machine jogging on command in all 4 axis before it all crashed........HOW??????) So I purchased a SIIG single PCIe parallel port adapter with a MosChip 9900 chipset. That parallel port adapter and chipset are noted on the LinuxCNC.org website as being compatable and working with Linux. It says on the packaging that it is compatable with Linux 2.6 and higher. So I install that PCIe card, and now no matter WHAT I do or try, I cannot get Linux to recognize the parport and communicate with it. The computer can see it. I have its addresses. I can lspci -v or cat/proc/ioports and get all the information I need to change addresses in my HAL file. I change my HAL file and start the LinuxCNC Axis GUI and half the time it gives me the error that it cant find parport 0, and the other half of the time (depending on the address entered) it will start the Axis GUI and allow me to hit the ESTP button and pretend to jog my machine, but there is no communication to the BOB. EVER. Like EVER. The steppers don't even enable or lock up. I get the "cannot find parport X" error code in the bottom right side of the GUI immediately upon program start. I cannot load parport_pc or parport_pc.ko. I cannot insmod the module. I cannot loadrt parport_pc or parport_pc.ko. When I cat/proc/ioports, I can see that even though the computer can see the parallel port, there is no kernel driver attached to it. There are a number of PCI Bridges that all use pcieport as the kernel driver in use, but there is nothing under the parallel port listing and literally EVERYTHING I can find online has resulted in some new error in the process that the previous posts do not address. I have that feeling like I am literally two lines of code and a mouse click away from being able to use my machine, but I can not - for the LIFE of me - figure out WHICH two lines of code I am supposed to magically mouse-click into that one special place in HAL. Yeah, you know. That one place in HAL where you do that one thing with that one special command line.... After 2 weeks of running my head into a brick wall, I am ready to punch a hole through my computer screen and call my day better for it..... For REAL.... But before I commit forever-sleep to my computer and give up on Linux until I die, my LAST effort is to see if any of you in the real-time forum have any suggestions. I'm certain that SOMEONE SOMEWHERE in this forum knows the magic bibbity-bobbity-boo to make her do what she do.... Thank you for your time. Your responses are GRATELY appreciated.

The best way to get help is to attach your Hal & ini files, any error logs/messages and any outputs of the commands you are using to find info about your card.
Supplying actual info is the best place to start.

OK, first, I can't IMAGINE why you needed to install Windows 10 to install LinuxCNC.
If you actually plugged in a PCIe card with the motherboard powered on, you may have damaged the PCI bridge chip, which may be why you can't get it to work, now.

If that is not the story, you just unplugged the BOB and plugged back in with power on, then the PC should be OK, now you have replaced the parport card, so the only thing left is the BOB, which could have been damaged.

Linux compatibility has little to do with whether a parallel port will work with LinuxCNC. LinuxCNC does NOT use the generic device drivers for the parallel port, it uses built-in real time drivers.

Every PCI and PCIe card needs to enumerate its port address, and that can change any time any PCI or PCIe card is added or removed. You then have to find the port address for the parallel port card again and tell LinuxCNC what the address is in the .hal file.

Jon

Thank you for the quick reply. Here are the pictures of the files. The first 3 are the HAL. The next 5 are the .ini. Sorry for so many pictures. The computer running Linux is not configured to any network so I cannot email the files. I will send another post with the cat /prco/ioports results after this one.


As for Windows 10, I didn't NEED to install it to run Linux, and honestly, it wasn't me. I was running Windows 7 and when the computer crashed, Best Buy rebooted it with Windows 10, so I just ran with it at that point (either that or they didn't want the liability of installing an unsupported system. My guess would probably be the latter...). I had to reinstall it with the 32 bit system 3 times after Mach 3 did IT'S thing..... yay. go Mach 3..... I understand Linux crashing a computer because it is user-defined open-source software. BE CAREFUL what you do.... But a Windows-based program crashing Windows from boot???.....Bravo....BRAAA--VV--OOOO...... That's a special kind of special..... On to better and more meaningful things....

The disconnecting and reconnecting of my cheap Chisneeze BOB was simply just unplugging the male DB25 connector from the female port on the BOB and then reconnecting it while the computer was still on and running. Shouldn't have caused any issues. The BOB, itself, is also fine. The power and relay lights come on and, under certain circumstances, I can get the relay to power off. How??? You tell me and we'll both be better for it.... I've also rewired to the BOB 3 separate times to 3 separate BOB's from 2 different manufacturers. No dice... That's part of my frustration. I KNOW that the computer can see the parallel port and I KNOW that it IS sending SOME kind of a signal to the BOB SOMEHOW, but I cannot get them to communicate regularly and on command (as in LinuxCNC).

Ok, so here are the rest of the file pics. These are the results from various either sudo lspci -v or sudo cat /pro/ioports callouts in the command terminal. As you can see, The computer can CLEARLY see the parallel port and CLEARLY sees the PCIe adapter card, but there is no kernel module driving the parallel port. If you look at all of the PCI bridges, they are all being driven by the pcieport kernel, but there is no parport_pc kernel for the parport. That is where all of my issue is. I cannot get the computer to actually TALK TO the freaking parport....

pics

pics. The last one is the sudo apt-get install pciutils results. Thank you for you help, guys. It is REALLY appriciated.

As Jon said Linuxcnc doesn’t use the generic parport driver.

To make life easier it is far better to attach the ini and Hal files, even it means transferring them to USB stick.
The output of most terminal commands can be redirected to a file. Then that file can be attached as well, it is far easier to read than pictures.

Plenty of resources on the net that will give better explanations.
Same as for transferring files via USB.

OK you need to do lspci -v to get the register addresses for the port. You may have to put sudo in front of that and supply the password to get the addresses on some systems.

Then, you have to give that address in the loadrt hal_parport line in your .ini file.

I don't use hal_parport, so I don't know the exact syntax for that.

Jon

Ok, so here are the HAL, .ini, lspci -v output, and proc/ioports output files. Sorry again about the pictures. Still trying to learn the easy(er) way to do things. It has been quite the crash course in Python the last two weeks.... I have already tried multiple times to change the address in the HAL file. I have changed it to literally every single address I can find associated with anything parallel or PCI on a couple of different occasions, cycling through them one by one and trying to then open Axis GUI thereafter. That is why I made the previous comment about communication with the BOB and the relay powering low sometimes "depending on the settings". Then I would open Axis GUI and see what it did. Sometimes it would open Axis GUI but give me the "cannot find port XYZ12" error code in the bottom right corner of the GUI screen (XYZ12 representing the 5 digit number of the port it was trying to attach to), and sometimes it would just open the white error/debug screen and basically simply say that it could not find parport 0, and therefore wouldn't even open the Axis GUI. This is where I am stuck an cannot find any information to move further. I know the hardware is all there and is being seen, but when I tell Linux where to look, it still doesn't see anything -- even though it is CLEARLY THERE.......