Was this a fully working system before you added the MPG?
 

moved to a different PCI slot, no change in behavior
moved to enable breakout power (W1, W2 up) no change in behavior
tried lspci -vv, didnt find the board. Sucessfully enabled board with setpci, then lspci confirmed board was not disabled.
...tried mesaflash, and mesaflash still returns no 5i25 board found.
did not mess with W3 on the 6i25

EDIT: i have completely removed the encoders from the 7i77 and later removed the 7i77 from the 6i25 in an effort to at least see if the 6i25 could be found.
I would also like to point out that if I connect the 7i77 i am in fact getting 5v from the 6i25 (if enabled breakout power) ...i probed with a multimeter (on the 7i77) the encoder TB and also probed on TB1. So I would say the 5v power seems to be there...


I am beginning to think i have a problem. I do have an ethernet port. should i consider a 7i97? Or i might be money ahead trying a whole new PC at this point.

The whole encoder thing suggests a  5V power issue.
(short or mis-connection)

The hard crash may only happen when LinuxCNC fully starts meaning the correct firmware is installed

W3 sets the I/O pin 5V tolerance option, it should be left on the defauly "UP" position

To be clear, i am not hard crashing anymore after installing a new 6i25 that i got last week. I am not sure what firmware is on either board.

I could try another motherboard...just a ton of work. what does the w3 jumper do on the 6i25?
i may try going back to breakout power enabled on the 6i25. It didnt like the differential encoders when I did that, but at least i was getting things through the 7i77.

I wonder if somehow the motherboard was damaged in some way at the first fault.
Because this is quite odd behaviour.

I wonder if you would get the same hard crash fault if the new 6I25 had the correct firmware?

ok, I used the setpci command, seems to have worked, I no longer get a disabled on the lspci command:
 

however, the very next thing I do is try to run mesaflash, and again it cannot find the card: 


I have adjusted all the PCI setting I could find in BIOS, no luck there either. The motherboard does not have PCIe jumpers, checked that as well. Everything was set to GEN1 just the same

Hello,
I am sorry my bad ...I am too much focusing in something and then I failing in others ...

I have tested some toolpaths till now ... Infinite spikes are gone at tp 1 and 2 at paths where it defenetely were in the past ... I noticed that TP1 during its startup with testing code 1_1001.ngc spiking much with servo time (if we take 250us as our goal - for 1ms it is fine) ..

Default TP0 and TP2 do not this behaviour ...

dark blue from scope pictures in the attachments then TP1 is spiking at each segment change over 200us during cloud of points its repeating spiking too.. 

I notice that switching between TP1 and 2 is not possible sometimes it creates error and switch me back to TP2 from TP1

thank you E.

I'm near complete converting another manual lathe (Standard Modern this time) to LinuxCNC.

These programmable keypads are convenient for commonly used key entries to Axis/MDI. From LinuxCNCs perspective they are just another keyboard.

I have a few spare keys and I would like to use one to activate a Mesa output. I can program the key to any key or even key sequence.

Is there a way to make this happen in HAL?

IIRC there is a file somewhere that either defines or lets you redefine key codes, I'm not sure if that will come into play? I suppose choosing an oddball key for this might be advantageous, so a typing a key on the regular keyboard does not inadvertently activate the Mesa output. 

 

andrax wrote:

Er, no. It’s not that simple; LinuxCNC isn’t plug-and-play. If you don’t have any prior knowledge, you should put the A6 aside for now and start with simple stepper motors. You’ll first need to learn how the system works and what each component does. With EtherCAT, you’re moving beyond the hobbyist level, and even professionals sometimes find it frustrating.

I only broke 4 mice from throwing them in anger... its fiiiinnnee.

In seriousness though, I find its less about beginner vs expert in CNC stuff, and more about if you are well versed in linux usage. Most of my troubles setting up were because the instructions just assume you know everything about linux already and leave a lot of critical details out. I am working with one of my customers to trying an make a true step by step guide.

If you do know "nothing", step and direction with a mesa card is generally pretty safe cause its mostly done by a wizard. You aren't mucking in the terminal or doing much editing in HAL.

(also important to note ethercat in linuxcnc has some quirks too, its not quite "final" in my opinion)

It's easier to start with a Mesa card for sure.
You have the pncconf utility that will give you a working configuration.
Once you have the Mesa config working, it's not that hard to
replace the motion part with EtherCAT. Cut and paste, though.

I should add that i have done simmilar things, and have a good bit of knwoledge near, not specifically with the ethercat stuff, but with Profinet, Profibus, industrual automation, PLCs etc.

Thanks. I will try to adopt them. As far as i have seen, the example file is for 3drives, and i right now only have one. The pid and vid i will also have to fill out.
Starting this project, I knew there will be a pretty steep learning curve. But i like challenges. I also have a Mesa Card on its way. Would that be easier to start with?

It's easy when you know it.
The problem is to come to know enough.

Anyway, it's not that hard and there is virtually no difference between
setting up stepper drives or servo drives with EtherCAT.
The cia402 layer makes them look the same.

The example I gave is a starting point.
You can copy the files to your installation, change the HALFILE=cia402.hal in the ini file
and give it a try.

But you are going to need to adopt and edit the files to your specific setup.
Number of drives, what number/name they have. And you need to add other
functions like spindle. That's in the sim file. So you need to mix them together
and take the motion part from cia402.hal and the other functions spindle, limits etc
from the sim config.