Sabre 408 with 7i96s + 7i77

Hi all,

i am a complete newby to LinuxCNC but I can learn quickly... I own a Geber Sabre 408 and I am changing it's controls to linuxcnc. I ended up buying a 7i96s + 7i77 for it. That was mainly because there were no other analog servo driver boards available in the EU (and I also have another machine I would like to convert in the future, with stepper drivers so I ordered a 7i96s for that one also). I had quite some help from Erik here from the Netherlands, but he moved to the Philippines today

For the Sabre I am only using the 7i77 at this moment, it is connected to the P1 connector of the 7i96s, so I am using nothing else of that card. I finished all the rewiring and that all seems to work. So I am now at the point that I need to setup everything with pncconf and there I am a bit stuck at this moment. I am running 2.8.4 and the 7i96s is available there, but no option with a 7i77. I found some other posts that say I could just use the 7i96 + 7i77 combination, but I don't see that one either. 

There also was mentioned to flash the board etc using mesa flash with a bit file. I downloaded the support files for the 7i96s, but there are no bit files in there. Just bin and pin files for each card. There is a 7i96s_7i77D which looks usable, but how do I flash this one. Since mesaflash doesn't seem to accept bin/pin files. If I download the support files for the 7i96 then there are bit files in there. Am I missing something or did mesa change something?

I did did some tests with another card in combination with the 7i77 (I think it was a 6 series card) to see how the setup/patching process goes. The steps I need to do to assign gpio etc seem pretty straightforward. But I am a bit lost in the steps afterwards where I then manually need to edit the hal files. Changing every call to the other mesa card to 7i96s probably isn't enough since the 6 series is a pci card. And I am a bit too much a noob in linuxcnc to make a good decision on that.

So any help would be really appreciated.

Regards,

Per

 

.bin files are required by the 7I96S, and 7i96s_7i77d.bin is the correct file
to support a 7I77.

You will need mesaflash 3.4.4 or later to program a 7I96S:

github.com/LinuxCNC/mesaflash

(build instructions at bottom of page)

If you are just setting up a 7I77D, I would probably use pncconf or mesact
and choose a 7i92+7I77 configuration.

Once you have created a hal/in file set file, you will need to change the
card name in the .ini file

thank you for your answer. The learning curve is sometimes a bit steep coming from windows...

I upgraded mesaflash and managed to flash the board with the 7i96s_7i77d.bin I also installed mesact and if I connect to the board and read out the gpio then I see that there are now 7i77 inputs / outputs on the P1 connector.

I had hoped that pncconf would now also show extra options for the 7i96s but that doesn't seem to be the case. The gui of pncconf seems a little bit more intuitive (but that could be just in my head).

Trying to find out now how to setup the axises with regards to the encoder info

Did you ever get this figured out?