Spindle speed?

Alright. Finally back on this project. The control appears to come from computer to a mesa 7187 to the VFD. The forward and reverse commands from the board go into STF and STR to command direction. Pins 2 (input) 5 (analog common). In forward the voltage ramps up and down as commanded through the gui and shows rpm in the bar. But in reverse the voltage to the VFD stays the same. If I switch forward and reverse command wires in the VFD they simply act in opposite. This eliminates the VFD as the issue. I need to find out why Linux isn't controlling the voltage to the VFD in reverse and also why it's not displaying reverse RPM in the GUI.

You probably mean a 7I83 or 7I77 (the 7I87 is an analog _input_ card)

My guess is that there is a missing abs function in the hal file.

The 7I83 and 7I77 have bipolar +-10V analog outputs, but most VFDs
only take a unipolar ( typically 0 to +10V) input range, so you either need to
use the absolute spindle speed pin from motion or add an abs function
if you have an old enough LinuxCNC version that does not have the absolute
spindle speed pin.

Upon closer inspection, it is 7i83. I'll get a flashlight next time. How can I tell if the version I have is too old? (LinuxCNC 3.4.6) Furthermore, can I update it?

Can you post your hal/ini files?

They were posted earlier in this thread. Not much has changed since then.

If you look at the hal file, none of the important spindle connections
actually connect to anything, that is, the hi-lighted signal names are
not connected to any driving source.

EDIT: can you post the other hal files? I suspect the missing
connections are there.

HALFILE = Knuth.hal
HALFILE = 6i24.hal
HALFILE = LadderIO.hal
HALFILE = custom.hal
POSTGUI_HALFILE = custom_postgui.hal


Also using halshow to watch hm2_5i24.0.7i83.0.2.analogout0
when running the spindle in each direction would help debug this

Unfortunately, I got the lovely task of coming in behind somebody else and I need to figure it out. I knew nothing of Linux prior to a month ago, but I'm a fast learner. This has had me stumped for quite some time. If you could point me towards some documentation or if you could give some guidance on how to accomplish what is needed, that would be greatly appreciated.

Is there something specific you are looking for? There are a myriad of back up files stored in here.

Looking into halshow now.

 You posted Knuth.hal but not:

6i24.hal
LadderIO.hal
custom.hal
custom_postgui.hal

These are all parts of the configuration