Multiple BOB's and parallel ports, and different driver card issues

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27 Aug 2019 22:45 #143365 by kborsum
I think your are right....LSPCI -V (image attached) says both ports are on IRQ-11. Being totally ignorant of the working of the Debian OS (unlike CPM running on an 8080--which probably dates me), could you point me in the right direction to change the IRQ pointers?

MANY THANKS TO ALL for the help so far~

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28 Aug 2019 06:11 #143397 by tommylight
At work so no access to PC till late afternoon or evening. I have to check on 2 or 3 of them as they have different BIOS versions.
Or could you post pictures of your bios, it might remind me.

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28 Aug 2019 12:27 #143441 by Todd Zuercher
Another thing to try (not that I really expect it to make a difference)
Try changing your loadrt hal_parport line to...
loadrt hal_parport cfg="0 out 1 out"

This takes the addressing guess work out of addressing your parallel ports and may highlight if there is a problem with Linux recognizing your 2nd parallel port card.

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28 Aug 2019 15:08 #143450 by tommylight

....... Also, changing "ldrt_parport cfg="0xe010 out 0xd010 out" to cfg = "0 out 1 out" caused an immediate error when loading the GUI.


I can also recall that not working back when i was using 2 or 3 cards in one PC, but it did work when the addresses were used.
In about an hour i will be in my workshop so i can check the BIOS on some of the PC's i have there.
BTW, BIOS is in the PC, it has nothing to do with Debian or Linux as far as this issue is concerned.

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28 Aug 2019 18:12 #143463 by kborsum
I've been playing around with a HAL configuration that uses only one of the two parallel ports, but covers the movement in 4 axes. the AXIS GUI seems to execute the move commands reasonably well with no apparent lost steps...BUT the Z axis will only move in short increments. Moving to GMOCCAPY seems to agravate this problem.
On both GUI's I do get a PORT NOT FOUND error that keeps popping up. In AXIS, its when I command a move, in GMOCCAPY, its when the app loads. If I ignore the error, things seem to continue to work.

My next step is to resurrect the original Dell Tower system, and see if the problem remains when I use it's older parallel port card. The system worked solidly for all the time I've had it, but it was getting old and needed new hard drives...and the control box was a complete rats nest of 30 gage wire.

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29 Aug 2019 00:55 #143512 by kborsum
The major problems seem to boil down to interference between two Parallel port cards installed at the same time.
DELL Bios editor does not have any way to set up the parallel port cards. If there is a setup file somewhere that I can edit, that might work. I'll try Dell tech support, but no real hopes there. Let me know if you know of something.
I've got everything working great, BUT with only one card installed. Installing the second card always generates a port not found error, and a real-time error as well. If I can figure out how to get the Vout (Pin1 on the BOB) to give me an on-off signal, then it can control the brake, and I have enough spare inputs to run the limit switchs in parallel.
This has been traumatic.
I found the paper on cleaning up the system, and will go through it on Thursday.

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29 Aug 2019 22:00 #143603 by andypugh

DELL Bios editor does not have any way to set up the parallel port cards.

No, the BIOS can only control onboard parallel ports.


I've got everything working great, BUT with only one card installed. Installing the second card always generates a port not found error.

Does it halt at that stage, or carry on? Maybe the error is a fault in LinuxCNC. (though you mention that they are on the same IRQ, and that doesn't sound right, though Google does suggest that IRQs can be shared, so perhaps it makes sense that two identical cards would be on the same IRQ).

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30 Aug 2019 01:38 #143623 by kborsum
HI
IF only ONE board is installed, the port not found error may pop up once at some point, then never again. Wtih TWO boards installed, it always pops up right when I load the GUI and crashes the GUI load...Also the real time error (DMESG) shows up too.
Actually I don't know that the cards are on the same IRQ since the reporting by linux gives the IRQ=11 for one card, and nothing for the second...so its may be safe to assume they are one the same port. The installation disk provided only supports Windows OS's.
FYI I tried almost every available parallel port card that fit in the PCIe slots in the Dell motherboard. ONLY the SIIG "Legacy" cards worked at all.

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30 Aug 2019 08:58 #143643 by andypugh

HI
IF only ONE board is installed, the port not found error may pop up once at some point, then never again. Wtih TWO boards installed, it always pops up right when I load the GUI and crashes the GUI load.


Assuming that the error box pops up, can you click the "select all" button, then Ctrl-C and paste the error listing to a text file and attach it here.

What "loadrt" line are you using when attempting to start both cards?

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30 Aug 2019 10:33 #143646 by pl7i92
can we see here your HAL and ini file of the mashine
also pleas can you tell us here what general system did you setup

and where did you get it from
on a standard parport base period shoudt be 100k this leads into a 60k step per second no stepper will meet that so you got lots of time and no following error

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