Does the -P card come with the usb connector for power? or do you have the dual port card?. My plans are to have 4-Axis machines using steppers and Quadrature encoders. In addition I would like to control the spindle speed and synchronize it for threading. I intend to have the normal complement of limit/homing switches with E-stop. The Gecko 540 includes a BOB with pins for the switches etc so I am assuming 24 ports to connect to the 540 leaving the other 24 for connecting the encoders (12 ports A,B index) and handle the spindle speed (maybe another encoder) and synchronization. To me the 7i43 looks to have enough I/O for this and maybe a few additional odds and ends. My interpretation is that all I/O not specifically part of the other modules are passed back to the computer as register values as part of the HostMot2 driver. So unless I need faster response I should not need to reprogram the FPGA but just write/adapt code on the host computer. Do you know if there are any free blocks left in the fpga? I am rusty but I have used the spartan 3 and virtex 2 series of Xilinx chips in the past. Under Linux I remember some problems in talking to the development board in the past so I was wondering how the 7i43 worked with the Xilinx software. This board looked promising for some other applications as well. I could send these type of questions to Mesa and at this time they are not a primary concern just a potential added benefit.
Hubert Sebastian Kuzminsky wrote: > <div class="moz-text-flowed" style="font-family: -moz-fixed">Hubert > Bahr wrote: >> I have a one man hobby shop with multiple machines, I really >> don't anticipate having them running simultaneously, but I plan on >> leaving them hooked up thus multiple 7I43. Since HostMot2 doesn't >> use the USB is there any advantage of getting models with the USB >> port other than as possibly a power source? Would there be any >> advantage to getting the larger Spartan device? Does the Xilinx ISE >> recognize this card for programing or do we need to use Mesa supplied >> software for that purpose? > > On my test system, i have a USB cable from the PC to the 7i43 just for > power, exactly as you say. The 7i43 does have a dedicated power > input, so you dont have to use USB for power if you dont want to, just > be careful because the 7i43 power plug looks like a "small ATX-style" > power connector like you might find on a standard ATX power supply, > but the pin-out is different. > > There is *currently* no advantage to getting the bigger 400 Kgate 7i43 > vs the smaller 200 Kgate one. All currently available firmwares fit > in the smaller FPGA, the limiting factor is I/O pins, not gates. In > the future, there *may* be new firmwares that fit in the 400 but not > the 200... > > For programming the device... If you're talking about sending a > compiled firmware image to the 7i43, the hostmot2 driver does that > when you start emc2. If you're talking about compiling custom VHDL > code into a firmware image, the Xilinx software does that. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Let Crystal Reports handle the reporting - Free Crystal Reports 2008 30-Day trial. Simplify your report design, integration and deployment - and focus on what you do best, core application coding. Discover what's new with Crystal Reports now. http://p.sf.net/sfu/bobj-july _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
