Pluto_p EPP issues resolved with MESA's driver?
- kostas
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I've been testing a pluto_p board with great success over the last month, using a very small VIA based computer.
Yesterday I decided I try another mini-itx motherboard for a new project. Everything went fine, except that the pluto board did not communicate. After the driver uploads (or tries to upload) the firmware, the LED stops lighting and I got an log message "Failed to communicate with pluto-servo board after programming firmware."
I had already read that there was a problem with pluto with some EPP boards, so after some more tries I gave up and decided to leave this and try a MESA 7I43 I hadn't tested at all. MESA's firmware seems to load OK, although I didn't yet connect it to anything.
The strange thing is that, after having unloaded MESA's drivers I decided to try again with the pluto_p and it worked! This morning I tested again and I get the same sequence, pluto_p doesn't work until I loadrt/unloadrt 7i43's drivers/firmware. After this trick, everything works fine until next reboot.
Any ideas?
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- andypugh
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Maybe you are finding the same thing?
It might be possible to make the Pluto-P driver also carry on regardless (with a bit of editing)
The pluto driver is a comp file, so can be recompiled without a full rebuild of emc2, if you fancy trying it. However, the 7i43 is a much better product.
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- kostas
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7i43 is a much better product, indeed. Many I/O lines and much much more control. Pluto is cheaper though and is very good for very small projects, so maybe I'll check the code to see if I can understand anything. It would be good if I had the option.
Thanks again Andy!
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- andypugh
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It's not a _lot_ cheaper, and from what I have heard it is a lot less reliable.Pluto is cheaper though and is very good for very small projects
so maybe I'll check the code to see if I can understand anything.
It might be as easy as commenting out lines 155 / 156 in pluto_common.h
git.linuxcnc.org/gitweb?p=emc2.git;a=blo...ivers/pluto_common.h
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- kostas
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- andypugh
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Can you give more details on what you've heard for pluto's reliability?
Various comments on the mailing list and IRC.
Read the comments from Chris and Jeff here:
thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributio...er/23439/focus=23444
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- kostas
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Moreover, I understand Mesa electronics people are more involved in EMC2 than fpga4fun's? Is this right?
Anyway, it seems the right decision is going with Mesa's products from now on. Although I had some problems communicating with them in the past about an order I wanted to make. They didn't reply to my emails twice which was quite frustrating. Fortunately I did find the product in a European site so I shopped from there.
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- andypugh
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Moreover, I understand Mesa electronics people are more involved in EMC2 than fpga4fun's? Is this right?
Yes. There is a good reason why PCW appears so knowledgeable about Mesa hardware.
I don't know how much right www.mesanet.eu have to use that name/URL, but their prices seem rather more reasonable than the German(?)Austrian(?) company I tried to buy from the first time round and shipping from Czech to Greece should be quicker too.
.
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- kostas
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