Need Help!- EMC2/Ubuntu 8.04 - PCI Parallel port - NetMos NM9805CV

[Jadecy]

I am new to Linux but have a good backround in electronics and MS environment. I have a new Dell Studio PC and have EMC2/Ubuntu 8.04 loaded (it is dual boot with MS Windows 7). This new PC has no parallel port on the motherboard so I purchased a PCI Parallel port - NM9805CV. I cannot find a complete enough write up on this to overcome my ignorance when it comes to Linux. I found the following:

http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?NetMos


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a ribbon cable) uses the first address listed (b800).

You can then open an editor and put the addresses into the appropriate place in your .hal file.

loadrt hal_parport cfg="0x378 0xc000"

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this at first glance looks like a good explanation. My problem is I have no idea where this .hal file is. I've looked in the file system and found some files with .hal as the extension but don't know which one to change. Can someone please enlighten me? I'm sure this can't be too complicated for those familiar with Linux.

Thank you!

[pfred2]

Have you read these:

http://linuxcnc.org/docs/2.3/

If you can IRC #emc on irc.us.freenode.net can sometimes be useful too.

[Jadecy]

After much frustration and beating my head against the wall I have grown in my linux-foo!

This is specific to several things but may help someone else.

Given:

Dell Studio Desktop PC
- no parallel port on motherboard
- windows 7
- one PCI slot

PCI Parallel Port card
- brand: For best ports connection (approx. $20)
- PCI Multi I/O Controller Card
- NetMos dual ports PCI NM9715CV Parallel SPP/EPP/ECP Mode hi-speed

Sherline CNC package

references and actions:

goto - http://linuxcnc.org/docs/2.3/EMC2_Integrator_Manual.pdf

and refer to page 25 for the explanation of what to do.

The file to modify for the milling machine setup (in particular the Sherline Benchtop Mill (inch)) configuration is /home/sherline/emc2/configs/sherline/standard_pinout.hal

Here is my file as it is now and the control is working properly. If anyone sees an error please let me know.

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# first load the parport driver
loadrt hal_parport cfg="0x0378 0xa800"
addf parport.0.read base-thread 1
addf parport.0.write base-thread -1
addf parport.1.read base-thread 1
addf parport.1.write base-thread -1
net Xstep => parport.1.pin-03-out
net Xdir => parport.1.pin-02-out
net Ystep => parport.1.pin-05-out
net Ydir => parport.1.pin-04-out
net Zstep => parport.1.pin-07-out
net Zdir => parport.1.pin-06-out
net Astep => parport.1.pin-09-out
net Adir => parport.1.pin-08-out

# create a signal for the estop loopback
net estop-loop iocontrol.0.user-enable-out iocontrol.0.emc-enable-in

# create signals for tool loading loopback
net tool-prep-loop iocontrol.0.tool-prepare iocontrol.0.tool-prepared
net tool-change-loop iocontrol.0.tool-change iocontrol.0.tool-changed
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connect to the second parallel port that comes off the header on the card. You can change this over to the other port if you figure out which port address to use.

To see the port addresses use the lspci –v command in the terminal window.
My address just happened to be 0xa800. Yours will probably be different.

To dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 I read some posts on the web to resize the drive and create several new partitions. The linux partition should be formatted as ext3 and not ntfs. I created an additional partition and formatted it as ntfs to have shared space.

Those are the main things that I found that helped. I may right this up more in depth later but I have some other things I need to do right now.

Later!

[pfred2]

I found
http://linuxcnc.org/docs/2.3/EMC2_Getting_Started.pdf
The most informative. Though there is valuable information in the other documents as well.

Have you found the Stepconf configuration wizard application yet? It is described in the Getting Started file.