Is a firmware flash required for a new out-of-the-box MESA 7i97 card?

Hi,
I am pretty new to Linux CNC. I have experience with working with Linux but it's the first time I'm working with LINUXCNC and MESA cards.
I have recently bought a MESA 7i97 card and there seems to be not much information on mesa website except the user manual. While going through some other posts I have read that mesaflash is used to upload a .bitfile firmware on the 7i97 board.
1.) Is this something I have to do?
2.) For some other mesa cards, I have seen a configurator application available. The same was not available for 7i97. Again, is it something required or it will work as it is?
Thanks and Regards,
Shadab

Edit: I forgot to mention I will be interfacing a 3 axis VMC with a Yakasawa Analog Drive with the Mesa card.

The installed firmware should be OK unless you need to support an additional parallel daughtercard.

There is currently no configurator support for the 7i97 so you would need to create
the hal ini files either by hand or by using pncconf for a similar setup (say a 7I80 with SV12 firmware)
and changing the card name and digital I/O names.

Also the 7I97 requires LinuxCNC 2.9 for full support of its isolated input logic

Here is a very minimal hal/ini file set:

Edit: I have updated the example hal file to fix PWM setup errors on some channels
and add example input usage (for home switches)

Hi,
I have looked over the HAL file you have provided and it seems to be made using HostMot2 app given by mesanet. Is this correct?
As per your suggestion I tried to create the conf files using pncconf selecting 7i80HD with SVT12 firmware. This card has only 3 connectors which are very different from the one's present in 7i97. How do properly assign the pins in this case. Sorry i'm new to linuxcnc and mesa cards, guidance would be very helpful.
Regards,
Shadab

The hal file I sent was written by hand (a long time ago and is part of the LinuxCNC sample configurations) and just updated to include the 7i97 card name, the hm2_eth

For a 7I97 you don't need to worry about connectors or GPIO,

All digital inputs will be named:

hm2_7i97.0.inmux.00.input-00 through hm2_7i97.0.inmux.00.input-23
and
hm2_7i97.0.inmux.00.input-00-not through hm2_7i97.0.inmux.00.input-23-not

and all digital outputs will be named:

hm2_7i97.0.ssr.00.out-00 through hm2_7i97.0.ssr.00.out-05

The PWMGen and encoder numbers match the channel numbers in the 7I97 manual

Note that you must also set the correct PWM frequency:

setp hm2_7i97.0.pwmgen.pwm_frequency 48000

and correct PWM mode for each joint:

setp hm2_7i97.0.pwmgen.0N.output-type 1
setp hm2_7i97.0.pwmgen.0N.offset-mode 1

Where N is the PWM channel (0 through 5)

Hi PCW,
Thanks for the clarification. I have worked exclusively in embedded C before where everything in HAL finally connects to a pin on a port, so this syntax was a bit difficult to understand. But I did understand how we connect AXIS X to lets say pwm 0(connection between ini file and HAL file).
1.) If can you also give me an example of how to configure a gpio as an input and configure it in INI file. I have an fault input from spindle 'VFD_SPINDLE_FAULT' signal which I would like to configure.
2.) I also have to configure spindle along with 3 axis. How can I approach this?
3. My drive is an analog drive what changes i have to make in the HAL file for this to work?
Thanks and Regards,
Shadab_SS

1. net vfd_fault hm2_7i97.0.inmux.00.input-00 spindle.0.amp-fault-in

2. On a 7I97 you would use PWMGen 4 or 5 for the spindle since these have
individual enables (channels 0..3 have a common enable) some setup details
depend on whether your VFD accepts 0 to 10V plus a direction signal
or -10 to +10 to change direction

3. Spindle support depends on the VFD input requirements as described above

Thanks for the reply, will check the spindle requirements further.

Hi PCW,
I got the board up and running. I was able to setup the network properly and Linuxcnc is able to recognize the board during startup. But it is giving me error during startup.

I launched linuxcnc from terminal and I am able to see that error is caused by HAL file during when the analogout pins are configured. I basically took the HAL file generated by combination of 7i92+7i77 and included some of your suggestions while making the HAL file.
My drives are analog so i need to configure the drive outputs accordingly. Can you suggest a way to configure the analogout0, 1, 2 etc.. I read the manual of HostMot2 Driver but i couldn't find any syntax for analog outputs.
Thanks and Regards,
Shadab
P.S. I left my office and forgot to bring my thumb drive with me which has the HAL, INI files and the terminal debug output. I will attach it here asap.

Did you try the hal/in file I posted?

The analog-out pin names from a 7I77 configuration will be wrong
you would need to use the PWM setup and PWM pin names in my
example hal/ini files

Hi PCW,
I have attached my configuration files if you would have a look it will be immensely help. Meanwhile I will try to configure drive pins as PWM as you suggested. I have also attached sheets on how I want the pins to be configured.