The 8i20 and some other remote cards run a microcontroller rather than an FPGA. It's a torque mode motor drive so an FPGA would be overkill. I don't know about changing firmware on it, not going to say it's not possible but it's not a thing like the FPGA cards. Instead you can flash non-volatile parameters. All SS devices run at 2.5mbaud changing this on the 8i20 when the intention to have it communicate with another Mesa SS device would be a mistake. However since I don't want to be "that guy" I did double check.
swrevision = 139 nvrembaudrate = 9 index 9 for nvrembaudrate is 2.5mbaud as per manual. The card is about 1 year old so it should be fairly recent software on the card. One thing that is probably of interest is the 8i20 and the 7i64 cards are older than hm2 autodiscovery. Discovery is done via a matching driver rather than the firmware saying "tell me who you are and what you do". If the 8i20 sw has changed in a way that matters over the years it's almost guaranteed that LinuxCNC updated it's driver, who knows if MK ported the update since the fork. There's nothing for me to change and re-test, the only thing I know that matters other than the hm2 driver is the baud rate, which confirmed is correct. Working setup is an x86 running LinuxCNC 2.8pre1, a 7i76e connected to a 8i20 over SS. Setup that does not work with 8i20 but does work with 7i66 is mksocfpga firmware built 2 weeks ago with docker, mk-hal and mk-cnc updated like a month ago. Same 8i20, my hardware. On Wednesday, September 25, 2019 at 7:54:17 PM UTC-4, Michael Brown wrote: > > I would no rule out the 8i20 itself in this equation: > Does it run firmware, and can this be reflashed ? > Can their be a faulty baud rate setting ? > Can you retest the 8i20 on a different setup to confirm that it works > correctly, > if so can you reference this exact setup (software HW etc) ? > > Michael B > > On Wednesday, 25 September 2019 23:40:11 UTC+2, justin White wrote: >> >> So i got my 7i66 and I have no problems discovering it, reading and >> writing to the I/O over Smart Serial. This is the same version of my board >> that can only manage discovery with an 8i20. So at this point I'd say SS is >> fine in mksocfpga, the rs422 hardware on my board is fine, and I think the >> 8i20 hm2 driver in MachineKit is broken unless someone knows otherwise. >> >> Any of the MK devs able to take this on? >> >> On Tuesday, September 24, 2019 at 10:09:58 PM UTC-4, justin White wrote: >>> >>> It was brought to my attention that I should probably have termination >>> resistors on the differential encoder inputs. While it was fine in testing, >>> after doing some research I'd have to agree. I slapped some pdf schematics >>> in there as well. Also improved the differential signal routing. >>> >>> >>> On Tuesday, September 24, 2019 at 6:13:21 PM UTC-4, [email protected] wrote: >>>> >>>> Looks nice. This and the version with an analogue industrial output >>>> (instead of stepgens) would probably satisfy majority of traditional >>>> home-grown CNC mill machine projects. >>>> >>>> Bet the connectors are the most expensive part of the BOM. >>>> >>>> BTW, I did install the Kicad. True, only in VM, but still... >>>> >>>> Cern. >>>> >>>> >>> I tend to think of analog as being kind of gross for machine control, >>> too much noise over cables. However, It would probably be a good case for >>> looking at the possible issues with Smart serial in MK/mksocfpga. The Mesa >>> 7i83 would probably be a painless solution for analog servos, and a better >>> setup because you can put the 7i83 in it's own shielded case and keep the >>> analog stuff away from the rest of it and the only thing between the 2 is a >>> chopped up ethernet cable. I just ordered a 7i66-8 that I'll pass on to >>> Michael if that fares the same as my 8i20 (discovery happens then faults >>> out and drops comm.) >>> >>> Hopefully mksocfpga will get a little more traction, there's some really >>> good use cases for it. From an all in one HMI type deal to what I think >>> would be a pretty capable remote machine control setup. >>> >> -- website: http://www.machinekit.io blog: http://blog.machinekit.io github: https://github.com/machinekit --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Machinekit" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/machinekit/e8de7576-86c5-4d8b-bde5-f441dd8a6bd7%40googlegroups.com.
