Welcome to LinuxCNC.org

Open-loop to a VFD, 0-10V. It's a 3 axis gantry router machine. Guess I was thinking in particular the 0-10V output on the 7i76.

Sounds like it's already supported by HAL, I'll just have to add it in manually after running pncconf?

I got to a pretty successful first stage last night, running the latest 2.5-pre from the buildbot (pncconf was shown as "beta 1"), on 10.4. I had some initial difficulty because after I had placed the 5i25 .bit files in /lib/firmware/hm2/5i25, and then put the custom_firmware file on my desktop, I was still unable to select the correct firmware for the 5i25. After much frustration, I realized that it was because I'm on a new installation, and the .pncconf-preferences file had not been created yet. Since my system only has one Mesa card, and no active parallel port, I was stuck in a bit of a chicken/egg problem - I couldn't use the new firmware definition location until the .pncconf-preferences file had been created, but I couldn't create that file without generating and saving a valid config. Eventually I was able to manually create that file, and one post here on the forum showed what line it needed to have to search the custom_firmware file. After that, things went well. I wonder if creating that .pncconf-preferences file should happen on startup, rather than when saving a config? Might make more sense for new installs.

I still need to hook the card up to the rest of the machine to try a stepper tune, but that should only be a week or two off. Thanks for putting the early development work into this configuration - I suspect that it will be a popular pair of cards based on their low cost, and their pre-configuration that is ideal for lots of simple machines.

I'm looking forward to pncconf spindle support, too. I'm still an EMC2 newbie, and while I'm sure I'll be learning more than I want to know about HAL, I appreciate as much assistance as possible from pncconf in getting that set up. My spindle control will be ENABLE/CW/CCW/BRAKE, 0-10V (or 0-5V) to the VFD, with encoder feedback to the 7i76 (single pulse, no quadrature, with index).

-Sam

Ahh thank you for your post.
The preference file will be written when saving a config regardless if you have the hardware or not. meaning saving a dummy config with hardware you don't have will still write that file. This is a 'back-door' way of entering firmware info to pncconf.
Ultimately I should ask for it to be included with the hostmott2 firmware download. which means I need to convert it to a dummy XML file- which I have not done.
Aside form the 7i76's analog output pncconf can control the spindle as you suggested.
single pulse spindle feedback is possible but requires a line added to the custom hal file to tell the encoder you wish to use a different counter mode.
having that possible in pncconf is on my todo list too.

Did you figure out how to assign signals to the 48 I/O points? at the moment it requires you to select the 7i76 card in sserial0 combo box.
I'm back from holidays so should start working on this again soon.

Note, the 5I25 bitfiles are not of any use with EMC, as you cannot change FPGA configurations dynamically
The config line in the INI file should just have the proper modules selected (encoder, stepgens, sserial etc) but no bitfile specified

Yes I realize the 5i25 doesn't need bit files but the XML file is convenient (transparent) to the user.

Sam surely read other posts and assumed that the 5i25 was the same and needed the bit files for pncconf to work.
Pncconf just needs to know about the 5i25 and the two ways to do that is to have it search for the XML file where it searches for all others or to use the back door method.

To be honest, I was pretty fuzzy on what files need to be where, so I just put all of them everywhere.

This might be a stupid question, but how do I even know which firmware is loaded onto my 5i25? There seem to be a variety of choices, including G540 configs, but is the default the 7i76x2? How would I change that if I wanted to (I do have a secondary machine that runs on a G540 which I'd like to connect up at some point).

-Sam