Mesa card comparison table

There are 3 of 7i80 on www.mesaus.com
mesaus.com/product/7i80hd-25/
Those are 50 pin ones with ethernet.

I went through the remaining DB25 cards that I missed above. They all feel rather esoteric in that they lack general purpose IO (probably mostly useful for the more advanced user?), so I won't add them to the table above. But for completeness:

arvidb wrote:

Thanks JT! I think I will skip the 50-pin cards as well as the DB25/IDC26 cards with more than two channels - I'm under the (perhaps mistaken?) impression that those cards are seldom used by beginners, for whom my table might be useful.

I think that the 5i24 is a very useful and cost-effective card. It i especially useful if you need to interface with Resolvers via the 7i49. 

I would think all of the cards not in my comparison are useful given the right circumstances. I was aiming to give a quick overview for someone migrating from Mach 3, or someone with a machine of similar complexity. A beginner's introduction, if you will.

Am I just confusing things by not including all Mesa cards?

Edit: BTW, I just noted that the 7i96 has been removed from Mesa's homepage. The 7i96S is still there, but not the 7i96...

Well, what function is on your mesa card is a matter of what bitfile is on your card.
My 5i25 do have encoder and smart serial channels.
Just my two cents

arvidb wrote:

I would think all of the cards not in my comparison are useful given the right circumstances. I was aiming to give a quick overview for someone migrating from Mach 3, or someone with a machine of similar complexity. A beginner's introduction, if you will.

Am I just confusing things by not including all Mesa cards?

Edit: BTW, I just noted that the 7i96 has been removed from Mesa's homepage. The 7i96S is still there, but not the 7i96...

Mesa's FPGA cards are a difficult thing to put a finger on, because their capability depends on how they are programed (firmware/bit file). It is simpler with the daughter cards because there you are talking about hardware only. And it is more confusing because some cards are a combination of an FPGA card and a daughter card in one (such as the 7i96).

PS The 7i96s is a functional equivalent/replacement for the 7i96 which was phased out due to component availability/obsolescence. (AFAIK)