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The default 7C81 firmware is 5ABOBx3 which is compatible
with the common Mach 5 Axis BOBs

richcolvin wrote:

The current gap I’m trying to fill is how to get from the Mesa 7c81 board to the 5 StepperOnline DM542Ts (Spindle, X, Z, A, & C).  In particular, I am at a loss on how to get the 3 needed signals to the DM542Ts:  Step, Direction, & Enable. 

I am seeking some guidance on where to find instructions or manuals which can me help get started.  I recognize that this is probably a very basic set of questions, so I appreciate whatever help can be provided to point me in the right direction. 

 

Have you found the 7C81 manual?  www.mesanet.com/pdf/parallel/7c81man.pdf

Though admittedly that doesn't really answer your questions, because the functions of the various chips depends on the firmware flashed to the 7c81. 

There are a number of possible firmwares, but it is probable that the one you have is good enough for your purposes. 

There are two ways to identify which signals are on each header pin of the 7C81. You can use mesaflash, or you can run a LinuxCNC HAL command line session. 

Starting with the HAL method, this will also check that LinuxCNC comms to the board are working. 

Open a terminal. 

If all it well, this should connect to the Mesa board, and give you a list of what function is on which IO pin. 

You can then continue with additional HAL commands, for example 

When finished:

The other way is with mesaflash. You might need to install this: "sudo apt-get install mesaflash"

(This might need to tbe "sudo mesaflash")

Report back what the results are, there are a number of possible hurdles to either of these working immediately. 

 

Hi,
Here is a YouTube link that may be useful.

Typically you would use a breakout board like the common "5 Axis Mach" BOB
and not connect directly to the 7C81s ports

I’m just getting started with LinuxCNC, with an end goal of running it on a Raspberry Pi (4B or 5), and driving stepper motors on my rose engine lathe. 

I have LinuxCNC running on a Raspberry Pi 4B which is connected to a Mesa 7c81 board.  I assume each stepper motor will need a driver and currently have each one hooked up to a StepperOnline DM542T.

The current gap I’m trying to fill is how to get from the Mesa 7c81 board to the 5 StepperOnline DM542Ts (Spindle, X, Z, A, & C).  In particular, I am at a loss on how to get the 3 needed signals to the DM542Ts:  Step, Direction, & Enable. 

I am seeking some guidance on where to find instructions or manuals which can me help get started.  I recognize that this is probably a very basic set of questions, so I appreciate whatever help can be provided to point me in the right direction. 
 

Thank you very much for your help.
Now it seems to work.
To be on the safe side, I reinstalled the image on the SD card and followed all the steps as described in the documentation here
litex-cnc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/raspberrypi.html
described here.
After reading these lines here:
# set PATH so it includes oss-cad-suite
if [ -d "/home/cnc/toolchain/oss-cad-suite/bin" ] ; then
PATH="/home/cnc/toolchain/oss-cad-suite/bin:$PATH"
fi
in my /.bashrc, the compilation of the JSON file seems to work.
I do get the error message at the end:

ERROR: Cell 'watchdog0$tr_io' cannot be bound to bel 'X0/Y44/PIOD' since it is already bound to cell 'gpio_out0$tr_io'
0 warnings, 1 error
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/home/cnc/.local/bin/litexcnc", line 8, in <module>
sys.exit(cli())
^^^^^
File "/home/cnc/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1157, in __call__
return self.main(*args, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/home/cnc/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1078, in main
rv = self.invoke(ctx)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/home/cnc/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1688, in invoke
return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/home/cnc/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1434, in invoke
return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/home/cnc/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/click/core.py", line 783, in invoke
return __callback(*args, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/home/cnc/.local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/litexcnc/cli/build_firmware.py", line 58, in cli
builder.build(run=build)
File "/home/cnc/toolchain/litex/litex/litex/soc/integration/builder.py", line 350, in build
vns = self.soc.build(build_dir=self.gateware_dir, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/home/cnc/toolchain/litex/litex/litex/soc/integration/soc.py", line 1205, in build
return self.platform.build(self, *args, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/home/cnc/toolchain/litex/litex/litex/build/lattice/platform.py", line 43, in build
return self.toolchain.build(self, *args, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/home/cnc/toolchain/litex/litex/litex/build/lattice/trellis.py", line 236, in build
_run_script(script)
File "/home/cnc/toolchain/litex/litex/litex/build/lattice/trellis.py", line 174, in _run_script
raise OSError("Error occured during Yosys/Nextpnr's script execution.")
OSError: Error occured during Yosys/Nextpnr's script execution.

But this seems to me to be an error in the example file 5a-75b_v8.0_i12o14p6s6e6.json.

means you have installed libqtestras5 less than 5.6 .... or not istall .... haven you installed QT5 lib? do it ... actually minimun is 5.15 ..


sudo apt install qtbase5-dev qt5-qmake qtbase5-dev-tools
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install libfontconfig1-dev libdbus-1-dev libfreetype6-dev libicu-dev libudev-dev libinput-dev libxkbcommon-dev libssl-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev libglib2.0-dev libraspberrypi-dev
sudo apt-get install qtcreator qtcreator-data qtcreator-doc qtbase5-examples qtbase5-doc-html qtbase5-dev qtbase5-private-dev cmake

but I'm not a debian expert .... not use it ... but have the same issue (install virtualbox7) on other linux distro solved in these way ....

I have a Pi 400 and the image loads fine. I have sound, and can confirm that it runs great on my setup.  Had a minor hiccup with my Mesa 7i96s board. I could ping the board at address 10.10.10.10, but when I started LinuxCNC I got the "temporarily unavaliable" error. Had to go configure my network settings. Once that was set everything works great.  Thanks!

Sorry, I must have misunderstood. So you have the RT1052 but you loaded the stm32 json?

Im not firmiliar with the RT1052 version, but if its like the stm32 version, you probably need to do some kind of fullchip erase, but I dont know very much about the rt1052



For installing linuxcnc RPI image refere here. it is premade with linuxcnc installed.

remora-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/sof...ry-pi-linuxcnc-image

do this for installing Rpi linuxcnc, the other section is old and no longer used.
"Deprecated instructions preserved for posterity"

after you have a linuxcnc install working, you need to install the component depending on which board you are running

remora-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/sof...mp-installation.html

then you need to configure your ethernet ip

remora-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/sof...hernet-software.html

You dont need the remora component installed to run the config tool.

I dont know if there is a bootloader or anything on these chips, but writing the new firmware wont overwrite the config, you will probably need to do either a full chip erase, or erase the sectors where the config is stored.

Ok I was wrong thinking this would default config but I have not found info on how erasing it can be done. I used MCUXide but not sure if there is option to use when flashing firmware so it remove bad config.
I have been through rpi3, rpi4, debian12 on linuxcnc pc and various repos to look for eth connection and failed greatly to access 10.10.10.10 ip which I managed before.
Now I have no idea where to find problem. RPI repo does not have buster release anymore therefore following manual on remora-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/sof...ry-pi-linuxcnc-image is near impossible.
command:sudo apt-get install linux-image-4.19.71-rt24-v7l+

don't work after all steps above in mentioned manual!




 

hello,
I found an old version of debian buster I am trying to install remora on a NVEM rt1052
when I run the following command (sudo python -m pip install -U pyocd) I have an error message

Specifically there is an installation script under 7,1 of PCW's link which will allow you to install if you installed Debian from the Debian web site.
But thats not what you want to upgrade from one version to the next release of linuxcnc
The ISO installer sets up the environment correctly including choosing the XFCE desktop graphical environment (te default gnome desktop is not a good choice
Assuming you are not using a raspberry pi, to upgrade from say the 2.9.1 release to the latest 2.9.2 release, all you need to do is to:
open a terminal window and typeThis will install any new security fixes and upgrade Debian to its 12.4 release if running an earlier version.
It will also install the latest version of Linuxcnc 2.9.x if one has been released.
This will keep any changes you have made to the Linux environment and you should end up with an identical environment if you installed the 2.9.2 ISO (pus any security releases Debian has released)

What is so different about installing software on Linux vs Windows is software applications are distributed as .deb files. Debian maintains a central repository of approved applications. You can install any of these packages from the command line or by using the Synaptic package manager. You can modify some system files to allow third party applications (like Linuxcnc) can add their repositories to your PC so they are also accessible (we do this on this for Linuxcnc on our installers)

Unfortunately, for the Pi, this does not woak as we have had to build the Linux kernel from source so doing an apt update will try to replace the current kernel with a debian One and it breaks.

Good evening,

I have followed exactly these instructions
litex-cnc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/raspberrypi.html
to install and set up the image for my Raspberry pi4 on the SD card. Then I executed the commands for installing litexcnc one after the other and the installation seemed to run without errors. However, when I try to compile one of the examples of the JSON files, I get lots of error messages because several necessary files cannot be found. I was able to overcome a few of the error messages by pointing to the correct directories in my .bashrc, but the following errors were beyond my rudimentary Linux knowledge. Has anyone ever successfully created and flashed firmware using these instructions?

Kind regards
Uwe Bartheld

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Hmm... then I have to re-install all the rest.... might do that later...

Pi4

Install the 2.9.2 image from the downloads page
If its a Pi 5, this image is likely better but you need o use Balena Etcher to burn it to an SD card as the rpi imager does not like it.
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NfRV8bho...3VXtN?usp=drive_link
This has been fixed upstream but I have not had time to rebuild it