Retrofit 7 ton HOMAG with Rexroth motors and drives - mesa 7i97t

Hi there
I am retrofitting a giant 7 meter and 7 ton Homag BMF 411.
When it left the factory in 2005 it was equipped with Indramat servos (today Rexroth) and Rexroth DKC 03.3 drives with sercos I communication. 
With a great deal of willingness from our local Rexroth technicians i managed to reconfigure the drives to analog com and now the drives are updated with new firmware ready to be re-installed in the machine.
I have managed so far to connect the 0 joint -x axis-  to my mesa 7i97t ethernet card and i can see the DRO increasing/decreasing respectively when I rotate the motor by hand. So all in all a first table setup with one motor no limit switches, motor brake and enable signals are still not coming from linux but directly from UPS.
Here are my problems:
1  When I enable the drive the mesa card throws out 1 volt to the analog pin and the motor starts turning at a speed that looks OK like 10% of speed max.
2. When I jog the motor in continuous mode the x axis DRO counts up 0,18 mm when pressing and another 0,18 when releasing the tab - same result if i use the jog arrows in axis.
Any ideas?
I am not a linux specialist - in fact this is my first time putting fingers to a linux pc but i have been working with CNCs for 3 decades 
   

If you set all PID values to 0 and you still get 1V outputs  from the 7I97T analog outputs
,the 7I97T is likely damaged

I wonder how this could be damaged?
it has never been connected to anything else but 5 volt, Ethernet, one encoder and one analog out? It has never been installed and has never left the table.

Missing grounds between a large machine and the controller can easily damage
analog and encoder pins, that is, unless a permanent ground exists between
the machine and the control electronics. there can easily be enough potential
difference to damage electronic connections.

Hmmmm
as said: it has never left the office deal and has never been near a machine in real life.
If damaged it can only be because of the failed attempts to connect to LinuxCNC