mesa 5i25 and mx4660 installation and configuration

Hi,

yesterday I tried the first time to connect my computer with a mesa 5i25 to the stepper driver mx4660, it failed.
What I did so far:

Installed the latest Linuxcnc (wheezy) and updated the linuxcnc packages

sudo mesaflash --device 5i25 --write 5i25_mx4660x2.bit
sudo mesaflash --device 5i25 --reload
sudo mesaflash --device 5i25 --readhmid

could you give me a hint how to check if the card is correct installed an how I find the physical adress of the card?

Thanks a lot and regards
Mathias

I think you may have to cycle the power of the PC after re-flashing the Mesa card.
But what is your exact problem, "It failed" doesn't tell us much.

Hi Todd,

sorry for being imprecisely. Maybe its better to tell my little story first and then my problems...

Half a year ago, a friend of mine and me, we started to build a cnc machine. The machine is based on the ones from cncrouterparts.



That was actually the reason to by the mx4660 and the 4 Nema 24 motors. To be more flexible within the used software, we decided to use Linuxcnc instead of Mach3.

When I run the PNCConf, it seems that linuxcnc does not recognize the Mesa card. I thought, it would be nice to test the basic hardware and it would be exciting to have the stepper moving. So just any basic configuration and jogging...
I tried to run through the PNCConf, but... It looks different to the official documentation of the pncconf wizard.



It would be great, if you could guide me through the first steps?

Thanks and regards
Mathias

For basic setup, pncconf doesn't no or care know if the card is there or not.
pncconf does not have a xml file for the mx4660, but you could generate a pretty close
config file set by choosing the prob_rfx2 config, and then do some manual editing of the hal
file to fix any minor details that may be different.

I do need some help!
Could anyone go with me through the pncwizard for my mesa 5i25 and the mx4660 please?

first screen


I do have only one Mesacard, the 5i25. It has one DB 25 plug outside and another one inside. Later on I will use both of them. So what to check on this screen? Mesa 0 with 2 parports?

second screen

this is something I would like to define later. Or is here any essential decision to make to run my 4 motors?

third screen

I have downloaded the 5i25.zip from mesa and expanded it to /lib/firmware/hm2. The first thought was to adapt the mx3660 configuration. The mx4660 manual says, there is pin 14 PWM. I dont know anything about frequencies yet. I dont have encoders, so set it to 0? Number of PWM generators should be 1. Im a bit confused with the number of StepGen. I have 4 stepper motors which probably get step/dir each. Does this mean 8 numbers of step generator?

fourth screen

Im completely lost here. Is this the place to give all the information about pin allocation? If so, I dont know how to put it in. I have got the manual of the mx 4660, but for example it is not possible to set step/dir separately.

Even if my problems are not problems for most of you, I really would appreciate some help.
Thanks a lot in advance
Mathias

First you setup I/O connector 3 (not 2), 3 = P3 = DB25 on back of 5I25
Each stepgen has a direction and step pin so you setup 4 stepgens
Also please chose the prob_rxf2 as I suggested
(The mx3660 config only has 3 complete stepgens per connector so pncconf will not setup 4)

_But_ pncconf has no knowledge of two motor gantry configurations so a large amount of
hand editing the hal file is going to be required to set this up. in addition ,if you need gantry homing to
dual limit switches, you need to be running LinuxCNC 2.8.x since it supports this type of homing