Mesa 7i96s - output 4 and 5 do not exist

 

Hi All,Newbie here. I'm slowly getting my head around linuxcnc and I just found an issue when using pncf to setup the mesa 7i96s when enabling outputs 4 or 5. I couldn't find any info out there about my issue, so..... for the other newbies out there....... if you want to use outputs 4 or 5 and you are getting an error (something like ssr.04 or ssr.05 doesn't exist) when starting your machine program. 

Open the machines hal file and find the lines where the outputs are and replace 'ssr' in the outputs name with 'outm'. Problem is you will have to change it each time you make a change with pncf. If you open hal show you will see that there is a ssr (solid state relay) and a outm (?) section listed under the 7i96s card list. In there you'll see 0-3 in ssr and 4,5 in outm. See the attached pic for some guidance.

For the experienced people on here, I'm just wondering if someone could spare the time to tell me how it works? PleaseI take it this fault is probably related to my version linuxcnc 2.9 not listing the 7i96s card under pncf and that 7i96 has ssr hardware on outputs 4 and 5, any idea? Can anyone tell me if the 7i96s has been added to the list yet? Pncf doesn't read anything directly from the card does it.? 

PnCconf in the current 2.9 branch supports the 7i96s, I just ran up a config and it appears to work correctly.

thanks phillc54, I will have to connect the pc up to the internet and update it. After I work out how update it.

I just tried to update to the latest on github (it appeared to be successful).

But I cannot select 7i96s as a board name and when I run the config as 7i96 outputs 4 and 5 are still ssr types in the hal file. Should the 7i96s 'board name' now be an option?

The PC isn't connected to the 7i96s so I haven't tried the discovery option, however, that was a fail the last time I tried on the last v2.9 build I had (that I installed within the last 3 weeks), for some reason only some of the IO was accessible after discovery.

What am I missing??

Yes, 7i96S should be an option.
Maybe try "make clean" before "make".
Did you run rip-environment before starting LinuxCNC?

OK, I will try the make clean option.

Please forgive me for any silly questions as I am extremely green on both the linux and linuxcnc front. Commandlines for everything really doesn't help my already poor memory to retain much.

BTW I did run rip-environment, could that cause any issue?

thank you for your help

Well, i must be doing something wrong. I did these commands earlier today to try to update to the latest 2.9

$ git clone github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc.git linuxcnc-dev
$ cd linuxcnc-dev/src
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure --with-realtime=uspace
$ make
$ sudo make setuid
$ source ../scripts/rip-environment
$ runtests

Without any issues other than a pdf that couldn't be found.


And just now I did the following

$ make clean
$ make
$ sudo make setuid
$ source ../scripts/rip-environment
$ runtests

And I still don't have a 7i96s option. What am I missing, I am totally lost? I used the procedure above to originally install the only difference being that I had to install some dependencies that were missing.

I do have an error regarding no hostmot2 firmware downloaded when running, pncconf, but I read something about it not being active anymore.

Could this be related?

That is just a warning that doesn't apply to cards that have the firmware on board.

So you run PnCconf in the same terminal that you ran:
$ source ../scripts/rip-environmentand there is no 7i96s?

You don't need " --with-realtime=uspace" any more either but that will have no effect on this issue.

​​​​​

There you have it, I feel stupid, I never even realised that the RIP needed to be run from terminal. So clearly I have a heap more reading to do.

Thanks for your help and time, cheers