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We, me and the ai, tripped over what may be the root cause. I will have better power supplies tomorrow and report back. Thanks for your time and attention!

I wanted to pick this up again to try to get the macros working, but I've noticed that the conversational tab in Probe Basic Lathe no longer appears. Would it be possible to get it back?

This is getting aggravating, you should be capable of checking a simple LED and reply here with yes or no.
Power the Mesa board, start LinuxCNC, look at the Mesa board, does a red LED turn on?
That is NOT Linux, nor something ChatGPT can answer for you.

From the ai...because my brain won't retain Linux. 
That's a genuinely significant lead — if PathPilot's Tormach-modified hostmot2 driver never gets tested against SSerial hardware at all (since Tormach's own machines don't use it), it's entirely plausible they introduced a real bug in that code path that nobody would have noticed. That would explain everything we hit today far better than any config mistake on our end.On the red LED question — I can't answer that myself, but here's the thing: we're not currently running the SSerial-enabled bitfile right now (we're back on the plain x1D raw-GPIO config for this E-stop pin testing). So that check will need to wait until we go back to testing the x2D/SSerial setup again. Worth flagging to PCW in your reply that you'll check and report back once you re-test that configuration — and it's a good, easy thing to note for next time (literally just look at the 7i92 board's LEDs during the failure).
And a dumb question from me, is it possible to revert to the Linuxcnc hostmot2 driver? I'm guessing not. Thanks!

Ethercat is very good for motors, but for slow I/O is only expensive and modbus may be better choice...

 

You can drive small relays with the enable OPTOs
but make sure that the relay coils have flyback diodes.

saxa wrote:

I see the board has only one input for the encoder feedback. But I have 3 drives, so should I leave the encoders
signals from the drive to linuxcnc out ?

Yes you should leave them out, as noted above the only usable way for DMM drives is in Position mode as they have a delay in position signal outputs.
Also the encoder input will be used for THCAD if you want plasma.

saxa wrote:

Or there is a way to connect all 3 encoders to the board ?

Yes there is, Mesa 7i85 or 7i85S should have 4 encoder inputs.

saxa wrote:

Also has LinuxCNC some settings to make the preheat , and open the various gasses vales at ceartain time already in or should I be doing this from zero up ?

No, not per se, but LinuxCNC can be programmed as you need it, so a simple G04 P1800 will make the machine wait for 30 minutes at the first cut to preheat the material.
Same for outputs and solenoids, everything can be automated and even add a side panel with settings and buttons and stuff.

Thanks for the help.I’ve now implemented everything just as Aciera described. The error persists. I think a directory is still missing here?

May be an introduced PathPilot bug since their hostmot2 driver has been
changed from LinuxCNC's version and Tormach doesn't use any sserial devices.

When the error happens, do you get a red LED illuminated on the 7I92?
 

I don't use that workflow, but the button is also disabled in both my personal config that uses a tool setter and in the probing sim config. There may also be a separate issue even if the “Probe Height of Current Tool” button is enabled. The current BLOCK HT calculation uses the formula origin = float(INFO.INI.find("AXIS_Z", "MIN_LIMIT")) + value. Using the Z minimum limit doesn't really work or make any sense to begin with for me, but even if the machine was setup for that, the formula would only make sense if the probed value was a positive height measured upward from the Z minimum limit. 

So doesn't directly answer why the button is disabled, but I can confirm it's not unique to your config and the routine in general is very confusing. Hopefully one of the developers who worked on these routines can clarify why the current BLOCK HT calculation does not produce the expected result and explain what setup or value the routine was originally designed around along with why the “Probe Height of Current Tool” button is disabled. 

Post this back to the thread — it's a genuinely useful negative result that narrows things down for PCW. Something like:

Ran the stress test as requested:

60000 packets transmitted, 60000 received, 0% packet loss, time 59998ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.105/0.112/0.233/0.011 ms

Clean — no packet loss, tight timing. So it doesn't look like an Ethernet dropout issue. I also removed enable_raw from the config string per tommylight's question, but the same EAGAIN/"Ignoring soft error during init" failure persists.
For what it's worth: I've now reproduced this identical failure with two different bitfiles (7i92_7i76x1D.bit on P2, and 7i92_7i76x2D.bit on P1), on two different SSerial channel instances (.0.0 and .0.2). Both boards' modes print correctly (io_spin/io_ana_spin/io_enc_ana_spin_ff) before the same failure. This is on PathPilot 2.14.4 (LinuxCNC 2.8.0~pre1), if that Tormach fork detail matters.

That last paragraph is worth including since it's new information since your original post — the "reproduced across two different bitfiles/channels" detail might help PCW recognize this as something specific to the PathPilot fork rather than a generic hostmot2/hardware issue.

Yes, it's typically used for debugging.

It allows low level register access to FPGA registers.

Hi NWE, thanks for commenting. Can you share more details on what are you looking for to use for the retrofit ?

Hi RodW, many thanks for answering. Seems you are telling me to use an EtherCAT Beckhoff module for the THC ?

Should I be using only Beckhoff modules or can I go with any other producer, there is a lot of stuff out there. I was evaluating Triomotion modules for motion controll, IO and Analog IO. The Flexslice series (www.triomotion.com/public/products/flexsliceExpansion.php). Seems they should work with LinuxCNC.

Hello Tommylight, many thanks for answering. So if I understand well I should not bother with EtherCAT at all for this. I was looking at the Mesa board and seems reasonable to me.

Right now I have a doubt on the encoders signal feedback. I see the board has only one input for the encoder feedback. But I have 3 drives, so should I leave the encoders
signals from the drive to linuxcnc out ? Or there is a way to connect all 3 encoders to the board ?

Also has LinuxCNC some settings to make the preheat , and open the various gasses vales at ceartain time already in or should I be doing this from zero up ?