Gettings started with 7i80HDT and 7i48

Hello everyone,

I have a question regarding the combination of a 7i80HDT and a 7i48 which is a 6 channel analog servo interface. I chose this combination of cards because I am retrofitting a mill and have analog servo controllers from Kollmorgen. A more popular choice, I believe, would be the 7i97T which has been out of stock for a few months at all resellers here in Europe. I also bought a 7i42TA breakout card for the 7i80HDT.

Due to time constraints, the cards have been sitting patiently on my desk for a few weeks, but now I wanted to start experimenting with them. I have my servo controller working fine with the +-10V input.

My question now is how do I get the 7i80HDT - 7i48 combination up and running in LinuxCNC? I've looked at the downloadable files and there is no .bin file for this type of configuration. Do I need to clone a .bit file and edit it manually somehow? Or do I just need to go through the PnCConf steps to get everything up and running?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Adrian

 

Its not obvious, but 7i80hdt_svss6_8d.bin is a usable firmware file for a
7I80HDT and 7I48 (7I48 on P1)

 I would load the firmware into the 7I80HDT:

mesaflash --device 7i80hdt --addr 10.10.10.10 -- write 7i80hdt_svss6_8d.bin --reload

(assuming the suggested 10.10.10.10 ip address)

Then I would use pncconfs discovery option to  read the available card resources
to create the hal configuration.

Note that 7i80hdt_svss6_8d.bin firmware has 8 sserial channels on P3 so
I would use P2 for the 7I42TA (you can use p3 by specifically disabling
the sserial port in the hal file so the initial startup probe does not toggle any I/O bits.
 

Thanks for your quick response and clarification!

I would never have thought to use that particular firmware because, as you say, the naming is not obvious.

I have already played around with mesaflash and that worked fine, so hopefully next weekend I will be able to spin my servo for the first time through LinuxCNC.

 

I have a question regarding the 7i80HDT. Is it basically the same as the 7i80HD? For example the 7i80HD is supportet by the Mesa Configuration Tool and the 7i80HDT is not. I've seen somewhere the possibility to change the name of the card with setname. So if I would change the name it should work with Mesa CT?

Thanks,
Adrian

Yes, the 7I80HDT is basically the same as the 7I80HD except that
it uses different firmware. You should be able to use a hal/ini file
set created for a 7I80HD on a 7I80HDT.

You should not change any hardware names as this will make it
much more likely to write the wrong firmware to the card.