amplifier fault troubleshooting

I recently started working on finishing a plasma table retrofit that was put on hold for about 6 months.
It has servos, a hypertherm hsd 130 (I believe HF start), and a mesa 7i97t.

I thought I had it ready for a trial cut, but when the torch fired, I got an error.
error finishing read! iter=172124.
I tried again with the same result. I eventually realized that I had removed the torch start relay and diode, and instead hooked the torch start wires directly to the 7i97t. (Not for any good reason, I just kinda forgot what little I had figured out from 6 months ago and was hastily making wiring changes.)

Despite not making any changes after my 2 failed test cut attempts, I am having a new problem.
Now, after I start linuxcnc, when I hit the power button at the top of the plasmac screen, I immediately get joint 0 amplifier fault.
The DRO stays at 0 for all axis's when physically moved, but the amplifiers appear to be on and displaying encoder counts correctly on their little read outs.

I'm worried I damaged the 7i97t, but don't know where to go from here. Any advice is appreciated.

Is the error an amplifier fault (something that would require a 7I97T input connection to sense)
or a joint following error? (cause by incorrect or lack of motion/feedback)

It is not a following error.
The pop up says "operator error: joint 0 amplifier fault".
The terminal says
joint 0 amplifier fault
emc/task/taskintf.cc 976: Error on joint 0, command number 110

I never hooked up a way for the 7i97t to sense amplifier faults. The only input from the amplifier is the encoder.

Can you post your hal/ini files?
 

Attached

I haven't edited files between things functioning and when amplifier fault problem started.

This:

net plasmac:breakaway joint.0.amp-fault-in <= hm2_7i97.0.inmux.00.input-04-not

Looks like the only thing that can generate a amplifier fault

I commented the breakaway out and now I don't get the amplifier fault. Being normally closed(i think), linuxcnc must not be getting the signal.
Since it was working just fine before, I assume its relating to the interference/grounding that tommy brought up.
To be honest, I get quite confused with the grounding.

-the ground clamp is securely bolted to the table. I did notice when bolting it to the plasma, the stud had a little play, I assumed that it's set up like many welding machine studs where this not a problem, but maybe it is. I'll take the cover off the plasma and see how it looks on the inside.

-There is grounding connected to machine and PC? I think? The whole machine's star ground is connected to the power panels ground. The pc is only grounded through the normal plug/outlet grounds. The pc is currently about 5 feet from the machine and is only connected through the ethernet cable.

-the grounding in the box unpainted aluminum box all goes to one spot that in turn has a wire to go to the star ground for the machine.

- The box is on the gantry. I think it's a dumb spot, but I was trying to keep the retrofit simple, so I left it there. This means the the ethernet cable does run parallel to the torch cable. They are about 6 inches apart in the cable chain and the torch is has a braided copper shield it's entire length. Maybe this is the problem? I thought it would be fine since it was already this way before the retrofit and worked before, but now I'm leaning toward moving it off the gantry.

The DRO number don't change at all. I suspect something got damaged here. I will test to see if mesa/linuxcnc can pick up any encoder signals.


 

I set the encoder jumpers on the 7i97t to ttl and tried grounding a+, b+ and i+ while watching the corresponding hal show pins and they didn't light up.
So it looks like the encoder signals aren't getting through.

I then put my multimeter on a+ a-, b+b-, i+ i- and got 3.5ish v, but on both a and b at the same time. Shouldn't one phase be high like 3.5v while the other phase is low, like .5v? It seemed like they were jumping between -3.5 and 3.5 when i moved the motors instead of jumping between .5 to 3.5. Is this wrong or am I mixed up?
Except for the z axis which was reading more like 5.22v.