Elumatec SBZ 130/01 retrofit

Hi, I'm azim4411's teammate working as an intern on the same project with him, we've realized that the choice of 7i49 would be apt for standalone resolvers, and have been advised that for AC servos with resolvers connected to the drives, it isnt suitable.
After further reading into the manuals, we have reason to believe there's resolver to digital converters in the drives for the resolvers, which produce absolute position and velocity outputs as "10-bit to 16-bit unsigned binary word and twos complement word respectively", I'm not entirely sure what that refers to, but this is as per a datasheet of general RDC's.
With this in mind + I confirmed the drives can be controlled via +-10V analog signals, what card combination can be used for feedback and control here?
 

Seems that these drives use a fieldbus interface which makes it pretty much impossible to use them in a LinuxCNC retrofit.

is it entirely impossible or just not worth the effort? because I dont think so replacing the motors and/or drives is within our budget

Well, I'm not in the position to tell you what you can or cannot do but your first problem is that you have to find out what kind of fieldbus is used. 'ferrocontrol CNC fieldbus' can mean anything. It might be CANOpen or something entirely proprietary. The only one that is reasonably well supported in LinuxCNC is EtherCAT which is not what your drivers use. I think there has been somebody here who got a CAN bus working through an EtherCAT interface.
In my opinion your best option is to get new drives and motors (preferably step/dir or if you feel like it Analog or EtherCAT). The costs of this can be calculated reasonably well and integration in LinuxCNC is well supported.
Everything else is certain to involve a massive amoint of time that is quite likely to lead you nowhere.

Can you find a FBUC?
If you call Elumatec or FerroControl, make sure you are sitting when they tell you the price. I was asked 27000 Euro for the old PC!
Check the drive manuals if they can use something else for control, and if they do output encoder pulses, that would make things much easier.

I understand, as far as what I've seen from the manuals and such the fielbdus is proprietary and as per an elumatec engineer's review himself, the system wont even enable itself until all ferrocontrol only components are connected to each other, so theres no point in a half swap to third party, might as well just switch out the entire drive system, (though the only obvious issue is with the PC here, the guy from elumatec also said the same 28k USD for a new PC, so safe to say thats not an option)
Thanks for the advice, at the very least I did get a pretty decent bit of knowledge about linuxcnc which was quite interesting, and hopefully someone else with the same issue can use this information to save some time.
As for our next course of action, we'll start looking into retrofitting kits and other controllers like mach3, if anyone has any other suggestions or reviews on good companies with full retrofitting kits (drive system + controller etc) I'd appreciate that a lot.
Bit worried about the price for the spindle especially, but I've been told there are some pretty decent chinese companies with cheaper motors, and another option for the axes is just choosing a lower power drive and using a gearbox to match the necessary torque, so I'll keep looking.


edit: just went through the document and found this section, might be relevant:
Complex automation technology plants require an effective and radical possibility
of monitoring, i.e.
• insight into the system, in particular the retrieval of conditions
• influencing, intervening in the system
under various conditions:
• initial commissioning
• plant-specific basic parameterization
• subsequent altering or optimization of the settings
• service and regular maintenance
• malfunctions
For this purpose, two interfaces are available to the DARC system as a partial
component:
When it is integrated into a CAN or Profibus-DP-fieldbus system the DARC system
can be parameterized, tested and commissioned via the serial service interface RS-
232.
When it is integrated into the ferrocontrol CNC fieldbus system the DARC system
can be parameterized, tested and commissioned via the fieldbus.
The following chapters describe all the procedures and methods, depending on the
type of fieldbus used, necessary to operate the DARC system with the appropriate
service interface.