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Once you switch to the Mesa cards jitter isn’t an issue as you don’t need a base thread.
I’ve got an old Lenovo i5 tower that I found by the side of the road that is fine for using a Mesa Ethernet card.
Unfortunately space is at a premium in my work shop.

That was going to be my suggestion- I do the same thing to backup my phone on an SSD, works really well.

Cant be too upset with any usability issues- Its only been out 5 minutes :-D

I have mixed emotions about using desktop PC's. I have previously had jitter issues (just using a parallel port based breakout board) but hope that this will be resolved with a more powerful PC and ethernet mesa card - with my newer cnc machine the stakes are high if something was to go wrong. It feels good to make use of hardware which is otherwise life expired- but its hardly an elegant solution.

having a reliable, powerful, foolproof and easy to setup rpi based system would be the holy grail for linux CNC.

Calysto wrote:

I've connected my Pi5 to my 7c80. I've powered my 7c80 with a 24V/5A power supply. When the Pi boots, it's complaining about getting not enough power for my usb SSD. So, the 7c80 is not delivering enough... 

There's always the option to power the Pi separately, but not with extra steps....

Still hoping that it will work.....some day.... before christmas? Who do we need to send an email, call, whatsapp, spam, ask for a bank account???

 

You could try connect your SSD via a powered USB hub. Not sure if you can boot that way.

I've connected my Pi5 to my 7c80. I've powered my 7c80 with a 24V/5A power supply. When the Pi boots, it's complaining about getting not enough power for my usb SSD. So, the 7c80 is not delivering enough... 

There's always the option to power the Pi separately, but not with extra steps....

Still hoping that it will work.....some day.... before christmas? Who do we need to send an email, call, whatsapp, spam, ask for a bank account???
 

>Have you tried one of the banana 5 boards with a 7i90 using the hm2_spi driver. I >tried with the latest Raspberry Pi 5 and it keep erroring with SPI timeouts. The >hm2_rpspi driver doesn't work at all.

That I suspect is because the address of the gpio controller doesn't match the rpi4b address. With a genuine rpi4b the rpspi driver works flawlessly. Bertho Stultans, a cs prof at a swedish uni was kind enough to write that driver, and rewrite for the rpi4b when it came out. Perhaps he would supply an include file to make it work with the bpi5, IDK and have not had any correspondence with him since, no need to as it just works, sending 32 bit packet at 42 megabaud and receiving the replies from the 7i90HD at 25 megabaud. My spi cable is maybe 1.25" long as I turned the pi upside down so the connecters were pin aligned. And old 12 volt fan, borrowed from a defunct video card running on 5 volts and mounted under the pi is all the cooling its needed in around 5 years. And my copy of the docs says its directly connected to the fpga, no buffers.

If Peter has since modified it to provide 5 v tolerant buffers, he hasn't told me.

I only linked to this thread as Pete mentions that 7i90 have FET bus switches, as do the 7i92 and 7c81, which the schematics have been shared by Pete. This gives a basic 3.3v to 5v translation. According to the Spartan 6 data sheets the inputs are tolerant up to 4.1v.

Have you tried one of the banana 5 boards with a 7i90 using the hm2_spi driver. I tried with the latest Raspberry Pi 5 and it keep erroring with SPI timeouts. The hm2_rpspi driver doesn't work at all.
I hooked back up to my RP-400 and the hm2_spi driver ok. The hm2_rpspi does work on it fine.
I've got a couple of prototype boards that work with the same Dev board which is about AUD $70 dollars now. It has the FET bus switches and has 2xDB25 connectors that will work with a standard Parallel Port breakout board or with the Mesa DB25 boards. There's also a 2*5 pin header that gives you 6 extra GPIOs with GND & 5v. That's the board that connects to the left hand header if you look at the dev board with the USB connector at the top.
The second board has the SPI connector 2x5 so that there's a ground wire between each signal. Then there's 4 of 2x10 connectors that have 8 GPIOs 5v power on the top 10 pins and ground on the bottom 10 pins.

On all boards the signal from the FPGA are routed through a get bus switch running on a 3.9v power rail, and on the "world side" pulled up to 5v, this gives about 3.2~ volts on the FPGA side . Pretty much the way Mesa do things.
The only smd parts are the bus switches everything else is through hole, makes assembly easier. Too many dollars to get the PCB fab house to assemble the board.

Software Download
 
 

我是一个CNC爱好者，创建了一个树莓派接口板，并编写了一个树莓派GPIO转换linuxCNC程序。欢迎使用。使用起来非常简单。您为 Raspberry Pi 定义的 GPIO 引脚输出 1，所有使用的引脚均为 0，将自动计算。我已经安装了 2.91 版本并编辑了 HAL 和 ini 配置文件，它们功能齐全，可以返回原点，可以连接手轮，并且可以用于 PWM 主轴。（英语不好，翻译）

 
 
 
 
 

软件下载

There have been a few things about the screen I have seen but can't remember where. Ther is a boot parameter to set 1080p instead of the 4k default. I'm sure when there are a few more about, these will be fixed.

Just tried running a config with RPi5 using hm2_spi (hm2_rpspi is not an option ATM), completely effing useless. Constant SPI timeouts.

Went back to the RPi-400 using the hm2_spi driver no issues at all.

As I'm not in a position to test an ethernet card I really can't give an opinion regarding that option. But honestly unless you are strapped for space (wanna small foot print)I'd avoid the Rpi5 for Linuxcnc ATM.

Really disappointed with it in that regard.

Boots but.......

gets stuck in 640x480 video mode, checking the kernel cmdline via dmesg after boot it seem to be setting bcm2708 frame buffer to 640x480.

Now I haven't ready access to a hmdi monitor so using a hdmi to dvi adapter.

Same adapter works fine with the RP-400 & RPi-5 with raspberry pi image I've been using.

Yes of course there is rod’s Image.
Sorry mate I completely forgot.

I’ve done a few rip builds and built a set of Linuxcnc packages on the thing, even without a super fast SD card it’s quick.

Just ordered a hat that takes a m.2 drive that uses the PCIe connector, so should be interesting.

Ok rod gunna test your image.

cornholio wrote:

And one other thing until an image for linuxcnc is finialised you will have to build your own kernel using the RPi kernel source and this kernel patch "patch-6.1.59-rt16.patch". Yes there is a slight mismatch in the kernel & RT patch version but so far it seems to work, and there's no errors patching the kernel source code
 

Well there is an image here crying out for testing. Its based on the official 2.9.1 image for the PI 4B just compiled for the different BCM2112 board.It should work based on cornhlio's comments.

drive.google.com/file/d/1H_q0Ra-27ZDOhqu...x1f/view?usp=sharing

First of the RPi-5 is quick, but be sure to get the alloy heatsink & fan cos it'll get hot.

RPi-5 may be ok for one of the Mesa Ethernet boards (hopefully) but I wouldn't plan on using an SPI based boards ie 7c80, 7c81 or 7i90 as the spi driver is a no go. The hm2_spi needs patching to use 8 bit words only, well as my experiments have shown, the hm2_rpspi driver may need more info of the RP1 io chip to be released. One other thing on note the RP1 datasheet claims latency of 1us between the CPU & the RP1.
Even mesaflash needs some work. It's ok for writing a bit file, but for any other usage on the RPi5 it doesn't work out of the box.

So I do have one but I wouldn't run out and get on for use with Linuxcnc ATM. I almost regret my purchase but at least I can relay my experience to others.
And one other thing until an image for linuxcnc is finialised you will have to build your own kernel using the RPi kernel source and this kernel patch "patch-6.1.59-rt16.patch". Yes there is a slight mismatch in the kernel & RT patch version but so far it seems to work, and there's no errors patching the kernel source code.

You are welcomed, always, make yourself at home!
My advice, use the existing PC's and stay away from RPI-anything.
You can freely ignore my advice, or thank me later!