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Dear PCW,
Again many thanks for helping out. This morning (before work...) I quickly cross checked the label and you are right: I unintentionally bought/received a 7i85S rather than a "normal" 7i85....  . This evening I will order a correct 7i85 replacement. My excuses for bothering the forum with such a beginners mistake, yet I am very glad I received this hint as it would probably had cost me many more days (in frustration) to find it out by myself.
Cheers,
Henk

Here is fixed firmware fro the 7I76EU/7I76U that fixes the MPG encmode
parameter direction issue. This is the full image that needs a PIC programmer
to install. Will have a bin file for remote updating soon.

 

Now is it possible you have a 7I85S instead of a 7I85?
(look at the paper label on the back of the card)

That would show these symptoms ( only the last sserial channel works
as TB1 pin 17..24 is the only serial port on a 7I85S )

 

OK tested a 7i76E with 7i76e_7i76x1_7i85x1D.bit firmware:

md5sum 7i76e_7i76x1_7i85x1D.bit
0d0922e5c4306ceba4e077fff3c02097  7i76e_7i76x1_7i85x1D.bit

And it works as expected, that is sserial devices 0..6 work

SSerial channels are organized as follows:

0 Local 7I76E field I/O
1 7I76E Serial expansion slot TB3 15..20
2 7I85 Serial 0 TB2 9..16
3 7I85 Serial 1 TB2 17..24
4 7I85 Serial 2 TB1 1..8
5 7I85 Serial 3 TB1 9..16
6 7I85 Serial 4 TB1 17..24

 

Dear PCW,
1.) Ok, understood. Since I connected 3 boards (2x 7i84, 1x 7i87) I should thus see only 3 SSerial. I was confused as the pins from one of the 7i84 connected to SSerial position 4 on the 7i85 is visible under this name: "sserial device at channel 6: 7I84 (unit 0x1800C0A7)" (string taken from --sserial command using mesaflash).
2) Yes I read this also somewhere else on the forum and made a new machine configuration in pncconf using this option. If I look in the hal file made afterward I indeed see a modified config string in loadrt hm2_eth:  'sserial_port_0=0000000x' and the number of encoders increased. However, unfortunately the other 7i84 and the 7i87 are stil not visible (these are connected via other SSerial channels on the 7i85 other than the one numbered 4 in the manual.
3) This evening I wired an encoder and checked it on all the 4 available enc positions (0, 1, 2, 3). I do see the steps increase/decrease in the watch window of halconfig. The signal pin names I look at are: hm2_7i76e.0.encoder.00.count up to hm2_7i76e.0.encoder.05.count. The enc. 0 (identifier from MESA manual image) corresponds to ....00.count and enc 4 to ....03.count. All seem to work nicely (cool to see this work!)
4) Off course I would appreciate this a lot. I also looked at the naming of a digital input from one of the 7i84 when connected via SSerial 4 (MESA manual image) on the 7i85 and this shows as : hm2_7i76e.0.7i84.0.6.input-00 and so on. These digital pins also work in this configuration Again I don't understand where the 6 comes from. In case I connect the same board to any of the other SSerial positions on the 7i85 than they don't show up at all.

You can contact me on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

A couple things:

1. SSerial ports will only show up in LinuxCNC  if a SSerial remote is connected and detected.
(so you would not see 6 SSerial channels in LinuxCNC unless 6 devices were connected and detected)
Only the low level hardware listings like readhmid will show all possible channels

2. With pncconf for unsupported firmware, you can use the "Discover" option

3. Do the other functions like the encoders work on the 7I85?

4. I can verify that firmware + 7I85 later today

@mediocre_chloride

Thanks for the offer. If you`re up to it, I would be glad to try. Removing U3 and getting one of the exp ports to work would already be a huge help.

Is there a way to contact you? I didn`t find an option for personal messages.

Thanks for the information.
I`m sure there are some facilities, but it`s probably only worth it, if your device costs several hundred dollars or is not available anymore. Google told me that simple repairs start from 120$ and more. A bit too much, unless I can be 100% sure that it works afterwards.

I`d love to send it to Mesa directly, but last time i wanted to order two cards, the shipping calculator presented me with a 250$ shipping fee. Todayy it`s 98$, but import taxes and tolls allways work in mysterious ways according to my experiences, so I refuse.

If nothing works, I can still use it as a huge I/O expander with a second ethernet port. I saw a video on youtube, where they connected two ethernet cards to the host with an ethernet switch. I think i read that one should avoid switches in favor of a direct connection, but my Raspberry only has one ethernet port. I will probably try it, if i order a new 7i76eu.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Dear Linuxcnc forum members,
Since this is my first use of the forum, I would like to start with thanking the community in providing this very nice software and all the support around it. I am trying to equip an old (1980) MAHO 300 NC machine with complete new servo's, wiring and of course Linuxcnc. For this purpose I procured a MESA 7i76e card and several MESA sserial daughter cards (1x 7i85 2x7i84, 1x 7i87).

I installed Linuxcnc a while ago (version 2.9.4), established the ethernet connection with the 7i76e and installed 7i76e_7i76x1_7i851D.bit file using the mesaflash tool on the 7i76e card itself. I think that this went well, see attached response on on a --readhmid command. I also made the 3 RJ45 connection cables which fit between the 7i85 and the individual sserial daughter cards (1x 7i84, 1x 7i84U & 1x 7i87). I also conclude that these cables are correctly assembled, as I do see the name of the daughter card and pins in a first machine configuration I made for the machine using pncconf. However.... They only work on one of the 7i85 sserial channels, namely the one identified in the MESA manual with Serial 4. None of the cards are visible when I plug these in in the other Serial connections on the 7i85. In pncconf I also encountered the "issue" (not sure if it is an issue or intended functionality...) that I could only select 7i76e_7i76x1_Dpl, where I had expected to also find something similar to the name of the 7i76e_7i76x1_7i851D.bit file. When I run --serial in mesaflash I also see that there is only 1 sserial  channel available, namely channel 6 (see second attachment). This while I had expected to find 6 channels in total (1 on the 7i76e and 5 on the mesa 7i85). During my own attempts to solve this I also changed the hal file line which refers to hm2_eth  to:loadrt hm2_eth board_ip="10.10.10.10" config="num_encoders=5 num_pwmgens=0 num_stepgens=5 sserial_port_0=00000000"Unfortunately this still doesn't allow me to connect a second sserial daughter card to any of the other sserial positions on the 7i85 other than Serial 4. Since I am stuck on this already for a while I decided to write this post in the hope that somebody is willing to help me out with some advice on how to proceed. Some specific questions:-What do need to do on the linuxcnc PC to correctly install the bit-file “7i76e_7i76x1_7i851D.bit”? I do see some info on this topic on: www.linuxcnc.org/docs/html/drivers/hostmot2.html but I lack experience to perform the right steps to do this install using the Synaptic Package Manager. I only have the zip file from MESA with the *.bin and *.bit files in them but don’t see this in the Synaptic Package Manager.
I also browsed to the "-Do I need to occupy the sserial on the 7i76e before I can put daughter cards on the sserial on the 7i85?
Many thanks in advance for your support.

The part number was in my first post = 74CBT16211CDGGR

Hi

Im based in switzerland and could give it a shot with repair by replacing U3, if i know what chip it is

Yes, 000000 Indicates the likely U3 has been damaged and is shorting out
the shared 4V supply so U20 and P2 will not work either.

I'm surprised that there is no SMT repair facility available there. We routinely repair
minor faults like this for a nominal fee ($35.00), but of course shipping is s killer.
(the part is about $1.00)
 
EDIT:
Its likely that if you simply removed U3, that the other port would work allowing
you to connect the 7I85 to P2.

The 0x1004 is simply the register address of the GPIO port that's connected  to P1.
It should be all ones = 0x0001FFFF when unconnected because the expansion
GPIO ports on a 7I76E have pullup resistors and all GPIO is set to input mode
at power up or watchdog fault. All 7I76E firmware is open source and the low level register
addresses/functions are provided in the regmap file in the source directory of the 7I76E
software support zip file.


The 7I76EU is a one-to-one replacement of the 7I76E, no hal file changes are needed,
unless you want to use one of the new features.

Thanks a lot for the fast response PCW

Both comands returned 00000000 (when lncnc is running in the background, the operation is not permitted,right?).
I take it, this means there is no response, or a faulty one. Now I can see some slight color degradation on top of U3 compared to U20, which i brushed off as dirt before. But it`s probably from the accident.

Is there anything else to test before trashing it? I don`t think anyone in Switzerland is doing PCB repairs, and if they do, a new one is probably cheaper.
Since the 7i76 is replaced by the 7i76eu, I will have to get the new one (if it`s even available atm). Is there any major change between them, or can I more or less leave the .hal file as is? I probably have to change the name everywhere, but as far as I know, the rest should be working the same way.

Thanks again for your help. I see your profile on every second post on this site and it helped me countless times before. I appreciate you taking the time to support so many people.

P.s. Is this "rpo 0x1004" something one should know, or is this more of a manufacturer inside knowledge?

You can do a quick check of the expansion port condition with:

mesaflash --device ethernet --addr IP --rpo 0x1004
for P1
and:
mesaflash --device ethernet --addr IP --rpo 0x1008
for P2

Where IP is 10.10.10.10 or 192.168.1.121 depending on 7I76E setup

Both should respond with  0001FFFF (with nothing connected)

Typically what would be damaged from this kind of a fault would
be either U3 (P1) or U20 (P2) = 74CBT16211CDGGR

P1 (U3) damage may show up on P2  (U20) as the chips share a low current
4 V power supply and a damaged chip may short this supply so the undamaged
one also shows a fault.