Help with Mesa 7i76E, Cannot get it working.

Hey everyone,
I recently (re)started building my plasma cnc table. I put the whole project on hold since the cost of hardware and compatible software (Mach and smooth steppers). I'd like to use LinuxCNC to control it. I'm having a hard time getting this to work with my Mesa 7i76E card. Here's the hardware I have: Dell Optiplex 790 (I think), Mesa 7i76E FPGA, Mesa THCAD-10 High isolation A-D accessory (I'll configure for this later), 4 NEMA17 steppers to mess with until my NEMA34s get here, 4x Geckodrive G203V stepper drivers, and some power supplies (5 and 12v). I've had all of the hardware except the mesa card for a while. I just received the Mesa card today and I have not changed any jumpers. Their documentation is not clear to me and I just can't find any information on setting this up (I have a hard time focusing on documentation). The PC is connected directly to the mesa card, no other network interfaces. I'm running linuxcnc 2.7.14. I'm confused about this because I clicked on the 2.7.0 Debian 9 Stretch link and downloaded the linuxcnc-stretch-uspace-amd64.iso but it installs 2.7.14. The linuxcnc downloads page says this version is not compatible with mesa ethernet cards. So, after installing it to the hard drive and get it running, I run the Pncconf wizard and select the 7i76e from the list. So this version is compatible with the mesa ethernet cards? I go into Settings, Network Connections, edit Wired Connection 1, IPV4 Settings and set the ip address to 192.168.1.10. No problem, I run LinuxCNC, all seems well except I cant jog the motors. After doing some searching, I found a post about switching jumper W3 up so the mesa card uses 10.10.10.10. I go and change the ip in the network connections setting. This is when the error pops up that it cannot get the mac address of the mesa card. I am basically getting the same exact error that is in this post www.forum.linuxcnc.org/38-general-linuxc...e-setup-help?start=0

Any help you guys can offer will be greatly appreciated. I want to learn what needs to be done but I'm just lost.

This is just a network config problem. Read here
gnipsel.com/linuxcnc/uspace/debian9-eth.html

So assuming you have your 7i76e set to 10.10.10.10
Your PC needs to be set to 10.10.10.1
And you need to open your hal file in a text editor and near the top, you may need to edit the ip address to be 10.10.10.10 where the mesa driver is loaded

post the output of ipconfig.

Open a teminal and type.... sudo ipconfig . Then type uname -a and post that also.

Make sure your network cable is goopd. Try changing it.

tommylight wrote:

Ipconfig does not work on Linux,
ifconfig
or
iwconfig.
Also he had a working setup with 192.168.1.10.

None of those commands are working for me. LinuxCNC seems to be communicating with the Mesa card to a point. When I launch LinuxCNC, the CR1 led on the Mesa card turns on. If I have the Mesa card powered off or the network cable unplugged, LinuxCNC kicks out the error and wont launch. I do not have any limit switches connected to the card (I'm not sure how to do that yet). Is this what may be causing the issue?

The replacement for ifconfig is "ip" so

ip a

should list you network configurations

burns@debian:~$ sudo ip a

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.

[sudo] password for burns:
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 18:03:73:28:d5:f0 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 169.254.10.102/16 brd 169.254.255.255 scope link eth0:avahi
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::1a03:73ff:fe28:d5f0/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever


This is the result while connected to the Mesa card. I have set the IP to static under Settings/Network Connections/Wired connection 1 and it seems to be communicating to a point.

Looks like you did not manage to get your local Ethernet interface configured
since its IP address is 169.254.10.102

Did you setup the Ethernet port with the net manager GUI or editing the interfaces file?

(BTW you don't need sudo with "ip a")

I have set the IP to static under Applications/Settings/Network Connections/Wired connection 1. I thought this was the place to do it?