Help with Mesa 7i76E, Cannot get it working.

I've followed that instruction sort of. I went the long way to get to those settings. I honestly didn't even see that icon up there by the clock until now. When I left click on the Network icon up by the clock, under Ethernet Network, it says Device not managed.

Ok, I did a quick search on that issue and I was able to change the NetworkManager.conf file so I can see the data when left clicking on the network icon. I still have the same end result as before.

What is in /etc/network/interfaces ?

Did you try the manual setup method shown in the hm2_eth man page?

On a new system it really should be as simple as setting up a static IP address
of say 10.10.10.20 with the network manager, that all I usually have to do.

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback.

I've added 4 lines since the settings in Network Manager wasn't showing up when I ran ip a.

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.100
netmask 255.255.255.0

I have not gotten into any of the files, other than what I mentioned here. I'm not really sure what they do and I don't want to cause more issues by changing files. I'm not a frequent user of any flavor of Linux so I don't get into the advanced configs. All of my IPs are using the 192.168.1.x based on the defaults in the Mesa manual. I don't intend to connect this machine to the internet or my lan.

I don't think its a communication error at this point since I can verify connectivity to the mesa card. I think its an issue of control but I'm just guessing.

Ping returns operation not permitted

Did you reboot after changing the interfaces file?
Does "ip a" report the correct IP address?

Yes to both. Do I have to flash the Mesa card with anything before it works or is it supposed to work right out of the box?

Just to reiterate, top left of the card, according to Mesa, top left is the ethernet interface, all the LEDs, the orange CR1 are lit. The mesa manual says CR1 indicates a fault. the rest of the 4 green LEDs and the CR1 all light up as soon as linuxcnc launches. All of these LEDs are OFF when first powered up.

OK so what that probably means is that you have successfully launched
LinuxCNC and it is communicating properly with the card.

CR1 may illuminate in a couple cases that are firmware and LinuxCNC
version related. What is your LinuxCNC version?

To determine the firmware version, you will need to run mesaflash

mesaflash --device 7i76e --verbose

should do it