Mesa 7i96 flashing error

I have a machine running LinuxCNC on a Mesa 7i96 card and wanted to add a daughter card 7i85. I followed some tutorials for the flashing process, but I made a mistake in the mesaflashing part and didn't add --fallback to the command. After that, the whole card stopped working and I couldn't ping it. I used the standard .bit file 7i96_7i85sd.bit. Now i can't ping the card, and the INIT and DONE LEDs and on with a red color. Can i revert this process somehow, either with JTAG connector and XILING's impact software or just somehow hard reset the card to factroy settings? 

Normally you would not touch the fallback configuration at all (you don't use --fallback
at all unless you have a good reason to change the fallback configuration)

If the /DONE LED doesn't go out at power up, its most likely that the flash memory
has somehow been corrupted and the card will require a JTAG bootstrap
(writing a valid firmware file to the FPGA) followed by running mesaflash to install
the proper firmware image into the flash.

Thank you for your explanation. Would you be kind enough to point me to the next step (writing a valid firmware file to the FPGA)? What is the JTAG bootstrap? How would i go about this? What hardware / software do i need in order to restore it to the previous state?

Thank you for your quick response. 

To write a firmware file directly to the FPGA you use Xilinx's Impact tool and a compatible
JTAG adapter to write a standard bitfile (like 7i96d.bit) to the 7I96's FPGA (not the flash)

Then you will have Ethernet access to the card (as long as you don't power down the card)
and can run mesaflash to repair the flash image:

mesaflash --device 7i96 --fix-boot-block --write 7i96d.bit
mesaflash --device 7i96 --fallback --write 7i96_fallback.bit

Those commands assume the entire flash image is corrupt so fix the three
"images" in the flash chip: the user image, the fallback image and the boot block.

Where can i buy/make(?) a compatible JTAG adapter and how does the adapter connect to the computer? Also where to search for the .bit files? Maybe the ones i used were corrupted and caused the problem in the first place?

Thank you very much you've been great help. 

The bit files are in the 7i96.zip file from Mesa

There are different Impact compatible JTAG cables
The oldest are parallel port connected, newer ones are USB

For anyone having the same issues follow along. Okay, so I took your advice and I bought a Digilent HS2 JTAG Adapter cable (check the cable variant there are multiples HS1, HS2 and HS3 for your board). I got a version of Xilinx ISE 14.5 (use a newer version is has the newest drivers and such) and i managed to tinker around with the .bit files inside 7i96.zip file using wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Editing_MESA_Bitfiles and some tutorials i found on youtube. It wasn't that much of an issue though it required some trial and error. I managed to flash my card with the instructions above and i also managed to mesaflash 7i96_7i85sd.bit on the board. The readhmid in terminal is working fine, but now im faced with a different error in which the board automatically doesn't want to do anything with the 7i85 board. I tried both ways of powering the board (using the p1 connector and using an independent power suply) The power consumption is too low if the 7i85 board is connected on both the 7i96 and 7i85 (if it isn't connected the power on the 7i96 is 5V). It's not 5V, so it automatically disconects the network connection. I saw that the DB25 and P1 connector pins are corresponding (as in the manual) and that the readhmid is also showing the same information. My question is what could be the problem that the boards are losing voltage and could it be something in the ini or hal files?


Thank you very much PCW, You are the real MVP.

Sounds like possibly the 7I96 and 7I85 cable power jumpers don't match (and this can cause a 5V short so be careful here)

Cable power used:
7I96 W8 UP
7I85 W3 UP
No 5V to 7I85 P1

No cable power used:
7I96 W8 DOWN
7I85 W3 DOWN
5V to 7I85 P1

Or your 5V supply doesn't have enough current to run both the 7I96 and 7I85

I double checked the jumpers, using the first method (5V through 7i96) and then direct 5V to 7i85, but the same problem occured. I checked the current and it was fairly low. It turned out that the voltage power regulator that I had was causing power drops and after removing it, the problems stopped completely. This post can be marked as solved. Thanks again PCW.