ColorCNC Colorlight 5A-75E/5A-75B as FPGA controller board

I've tested some more, but I cannot get it to work on my linuxCNC installation yet. I have replaced the first part of the links by the string "https--" to keep the forum software happy

I've created a new user to my LinuxCNC machine, to test with a fresh start:
root@mill:~# useradd -m testuser
root@mill:~# passwd testuser
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully
root@mill:~# su testuser
$ bash --login
testuser@mill:/root$ cd
testuser@mill:~$

Now let's try the commands:
testuser@mill:~$ pip install --extra-index-url https--test.pypi.org/simple/ litexcnc[cli]
bash: pip: command not found

Pip was installed, but it is known as pip3, not just pip
root@mill:~# apt-get install python3-pip
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
python3-pip is already the newest version (18.1-5).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

testuser@mill:~$ pip3 install --extra-index-url https--test.pypi.org/simple/ litexcnc[cli]
Looking in indexes: https--pypi.org/simple, https--test.pypi.org/simple/
Collecting litexcnc[cli]
Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: 404 Client Error: Not Found for url: https--pypi.org/simple/litexcnc/

Try again with python2
# apt-get install python-pip
$ pip install --extra-index-url https--test.pypi.org/simple/ litexcnc[cli]
Looking in indexes: https--pypi.org/simple, https--test.pypi.org/simple/
Collecting litexcnc[cli]
Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: 404 Client Error: Not Found for url: https--pypi.org/simple/litexcnc/

The url https--test.pypi.org/simple/litexcnc/ is valid, but pip doesn't seem to use it.

testuser@mill:~$ pip install -i https--test.pypi.org/simple/ litexcnc[cli]
Looking in indexes: https--test.pypi.org/simple/
Collecting litexcnc[cli]
Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement litexcnc[cli] (from versions: )
No matching distribution found for litexcnc[cli]

Pip3 goes a bit further:
testuser@mill:~$ pip3 install -i https--test.pypi.org/simple/ litexcnc[cli]
Looking in indexes: https--test.pypi.org/simple/
Collecting litexcnc[cli]
Downloading https--test-files.pythonhosted.org/packages/30/26/efc54ae0864aa303387ac22bfc985fb9f7235fea4e63ac462d0439528a54/litexcnc-0.9.0a4-py3-none-any.whl (146kB)
100% |████████████████████████████████| 153kB 3.5MB/s
Collecting packaging<22.0,>=21.3 (from litexcnc[cli])
Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement packaging<22.0,>=21.3 (from litexcnc[cli]) (from versions: 16.7)
No matching distribution found for packaging<22.0,>=21.3 (from litexcnc[cli])

@DePrutser: Thanks for trying! Could you please provide me with:

• your Linux distro type and version;
• your LinuxCNC version
• your python version (i.e. python --version)

What my experience is with installing is that you might need to install the whole package with sudo. The reason for this the usage of halcompile in one of the scripts, which required in my case root access to the system. When installing it with root acces, it means that all commands are required to be prepended with sudo. However, I experienced problems with compiling the firmware in this case, as it cannot find the toolchain in Debian. This was solved with:
Above won't solve your error, I've to look into that error based on the version you use.

Update on Linux 2.9:
The complete driver has been re-written and I'm able to connect to the card using halrun. I'm going to merge the branches tomorrow and do another pre-release.

In the update is also a small bug-fix for Python 3.7 in building the firmware. Python 3.7 does support Literal, so it would lead to strange errors. The error was in LitexCNC, however the error was pointing to Litex. Anyway, this has been fixed by an added depency 'typing_extensions' and some error catching at start up.

5A-75E Version 8.2
I spotted a new FPGA in the wild. I received a version 8.2 of the 5A-75E. It took me some time to get it talking to LinuxCNC, but that was my fault. If you receive such an FPGA, you can use the firmware for the version 6.0 as the pin-out seems to be the same. The only difference seems to be a higher speed grade for the FPGA.

Hello , do you support 5A75E board?

wuyatom wrote:

Hello , do you support 5A75E board?

Yes, it is supported. Please find two configuration files attached. These will work perfectly fine for any version 6.0, 8.0 or 8.2 5A-75E board. You should change the extension to .json, because the forum does not allow me to upload that type.

I just released a new pre-release of LitexCNC. This pre-release focuses on support of LinuxCNC 2.9 and solving compiler warnings. It contains also some minor bug-fixes.

One can install this pre-release with:
The documentation can be found here .

Next step
I will now focus on getting the card in my EMCO5 to get some experience in its real-life performance. This little EMCO has a toolchanger, which requires some extra firmware (toolerator3000). I would like to add this carroussel type of firmware to the card. LitexCNC is going to have a plugin eco-system to add more components in the future.

I want to try, is there anything special when starting in virtual OS ?