Pimping the mini-lathe

PCW wrote: The as shipped 7I96 has the 7i96d.bit bitfile loaded
This has 5 stepgens and no PWM.

To load 7i96d_1pwm.bit you would need to fetch the 7i96.zip archive from Mesa,
extract the 7i96d_1pwm.bit bitfile and run these commands:

mesaflash --device 7i96 --addr [the cards current ip address] --write 7i96d_1pwm.bit
mesaflash --device 7i96 --addr [the cards current ip address] --reload

Do I first use PNCConf to set up the connection, IP address etc between the PC and 7i96, and then flash it with the PWM bitfile, or do I have to manually configure the connection and then flash it, before using PNCConf?

Is the Ethornton 7i96 configuration tool still the way to do it, like in this video from ~6minutes?


Well, that video helps. I jumpered for the fixed IP address of the EEPROM, and set a fic IP address as DEAD IO showed there, and now have them connected and the PWM bitfile flashed. I am still a bit unsure whether it is better to use that one Ethornton configuration widget, as I thought PNCConf has now been revised to configure a 7i96.

Either way, I am not off to buy a new (used) camera (panasonic G81) as the current video set up with the older Olympus EM10 I am not too happy with. I'll continue with the 7i96 tomorrow.

I think Johns utility has trouble with the new spindle pin names (that changed
sometime in the 2.8 line) Easily fixable in hal though

You can certainly try both

I'd go with Pncconf as its part of the core. I did have a few issues getting John's tool running..
I also did not like the hal file data as it is filled in from ini file values which I thought it would be hard to maintain.
Given that I've only ever used a hand coded hal and ini file.....

Here is episode 24...


Enjoy,
Mark

LOL, you are becoming worse than "this old Tony" !
To stop anything in a terminal
ctrl+c
:woohoo: .300 for Z axis ???