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

Done, thank you.
Removed "discussion" as this is a discussion board so it is redundant, and added "colorcnc" so it can be found by those who have not been here lately.

thank you! I was able to get the dev env working locally, this will be handy for testing thing out.

i found a few typos in your testing notes:
```
loadrt litexcnc_etch config_file=<path_to_config_file>
```
should be
```
loadrt litexcnc_eth config_file=<path_to_config_file>
```

and then:
```
loadrt threads name1=servo-thread period=100000 fp=1
```
should be
```
loadrt threads name1=servo-thread period1=100000 fp1=1
```

would <board_name> in my case be something like, `colorlight_5a_75e` ? its not super clear where thats defined.

I typed those commands as I remembered, my apologies for the typos. For clarity, I updated the typos in the original post.

Regarding the <board-name>, this is defined in the JSON file with the tag "name". However, I discovered that it is hard-coded to 'test' at this moment. Tonight I will update this to use the correct name. In halcmd it is quiet easy to retrieve the board name, after adding the board with  You can retrieve the functions with This tells you which functions can be added to the thread and you could derive the board-name from this output.

awesome, thank you! I see the section where test name is hardcoded--I am new to C so am dangerous at this point , but was able to see it connect to the board over my network from the container.

I am going to attempt to replace a few of the buffers and test inputs/outputs on the board. Just purchased a hot air rework station so that will be another fun thing to try out.

Sorry for not responding a while, but I had serious trouble to get my testing system up and running. Docker on Windows doesn't allow correct routing of UDP packets from containers to the outside, spent too much time discovering that.

Second attempt was to use an old Raspberry Pi. After installing Raspbian, LinuxCNC, etc I found out that it only has 100 BASE ethernet (Fast Ethernet) and that this is incompatible with Gigabit ethernet. Thus the 5a-75e cannot be used on old Raspberry Pis directly, only model 4 will do the trick.

Anyway, just installed a gigabit switch and we can go forward again. The old Pi can communicate over the network with the card now using this switch. Not ideal for real-time behavior I think, but I can start testing now too...

First project with hot air reflow soldering replacement buffers was a success! I was able to replace 6 of the buffers on the 5A-75E board mapping to the first few connectors which will be designated for inputs in my setup. I am going to give the board a thorough inspection before powering it up to make sure I have no shorts or weak joints. Also as noted before will be needing to feed the board with slightly less than 5V (somewhere around 4.2V) using a buck converter so that the voltages exposed to the FPGA directly are within spec.