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By what metric have you been testing latency ? Your process and figures would be interesting to see.

The other thing that would be a major obstacle is that there is no real time kernel for BSD in the way that there is for Linux. Syscalls maybe another issue as well, I'm unsure whether the APIs for BSD and Linux are the same.

Linuxcnc isn't "designed for debian" originally the ISO were built for Ubuntu, but licensing became an issue. Linuxcnc can be built for any distro. Years ago I was running Linuxcnc on Slackware and in a moment of pure madness I built it on a system built using the LFS & BLFS way.

As for "stupid back ground processes" it's up to the user what they want to run in the background and what features they want to lose. Do you want the OS to mount a drive when plugged in or do you want to mount & umount the drive manually ? What processes do you sugeest turning off for the best system ?

I have a choice of 12 items, and tried the Qcombobox. I was able to populate it, but it seems its not integrated to get the selected item for further processing. I used radiobuttons for a choice of 2 or 3, but for this amount of selections the switchboard is getting too big. Am i doing wrong, or is this not part of flexgui yet?

 

Do you get any motion now?

There was a build for ARCH Linux a while back, but i do not recall any BSD option, although you can always try building from sources.

What version is your installation now?

You can try 2.9.4 if you like.

The Desktop Environment and OS as a whole are probably a bit more polished.

Old XFCE was pretty ugly.

It's Alive!
I reverted back to my old installation and succeeded in clearing all errors except the kinematicsSwitch error.
I then tried a basic config in PnCConf and it worked. (I did not know PnCConf existed)
I am now reading a MPG in halscope, and am confident that by hook or by crook, this mill will run before the year is out.
Thanks to all for the help so far.
#happyChappie

You can setup gantry machines with pncconf:

 

Been trying to get the estop and machine on circuits working properly today with help from marks mh400e information which he kindly sent to me. 
just wondering if the older mahos have the same estop chains and components?
 

Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction. 

Yes, any AI I asked eventually started hallucinating code that broke things. 

I did have someone send me a template HAL & INI set for the machine I am using (a Platform CNC with upgraded linear rails. Excellent hardware, currently being let down by confusing software, and its operator.) I was able to cobble something together that mostly worked, after much iteration. Since this was done manually, it didn't help me with learning and using PnCConf, which I would prefer. 

At this point I have everything moving, but until I sort out homing, the Y & Y2 axes are not moving in unison. They are seen as separate Joints 1 & 2. I assumed there would be some way to simply lock them together as one gantry joint(?), but apparently that's not how LinuxCNC works.

Yes, I have flashed the G540 firmware to the 7i92 card.

What exactly is the problem you are having?

What type of machine do you have?

It is a mill, lathe, or router?

Potentially related and helpful: linuxcnc.langdonstaab.ca/30-cnc-machines...en-start-to-retrofit

Can you post a picture of the actual board.

(A picture you took)

Pictures on aliexpress are not known for being trustworthy, though sometimes they actually are.

 

I would start looking at
- encoders. With the current stm32f407 the quadrature counters are tied to certain pins, and max 4 such hardware counters. Code is in E3000, would copy that.
- EtherCAT chip, would base it on LAN9252 (which most of the cards use) due to Ax58100 limit of 2x16 pdos. Don't know of a limit for LAN9252, it's not less than 2x16. 
- Opto-couplers, would revisit.

If you are thinking of stepper generator with encoder inputs, say for four of them, would base it on E3000 for the user code and extend to four encoders, code is already there. soes library from E7000. Hardware will be based on E3000 around stm32, around E7000 for EtherCAT.

One can think of one card supporting 1 drive. Or 2 stepper drives. And use multiple cards

In linuxcnc 2.10 there is 64-bit integers, so no risk for encoders overflowing. 32-bit isn't quite enough at least for spindles.

Is it just an idea, or are you going to do it?
.

If PNCConf is applicable to your situation, you can use it to make a config.

While it does not offer 100% of the funtionality you can achieve by edting the .ini file, it's a great start.

You can edit an existing config with PNCConf too.

And you can create as many configs as you like until you have one that works.

Also, be careful as you have a lot of transformers that can each deliver substantial current.

When in doubt, use a circuit breaker or something (the circuit breaker may not survive) to protect a vital circuit.

Also keep in mind that most switching power supplies have intrinsic overload protection while a simple, traditional transformer-rectifier supply does not.

Though for powering motor drivers, those transformers will do a good job, albeit with some risk.

If you have a page scanner, use it instead of your camera to scan paper documents, as it will yeild slightly more readable scans, though a picture is certainly good enough.