LinuxCNC-RIO - RealtimeIO for LinuxCNC based on FPGA (ICE40 / ECP5)

the mesa boards have no network and are nothing more than a spartan6 with level shifters, you also need BOB's to be able to do anything with them

i thought you would have fun building boards, we have ready-made designs, nothing great but they work

github.com/multigcs/LinuxCNC-RIO/tree/main/configs/Tangoboard
github.com/multigcs/rio-octobot
github.com/multigcs/rio-iceshield

Ya won't believe this, just found a decade old spartan-6 sitting in the bottom of my abandoned gizmo box. Let me dwload the toolchain for that badboy and I'll give it a trial tomorrow after work. If this all works out as planned I'll get two of those 7I90HD. Haha Magic, Effortless!! 

@cornholio have a spartan6 board running on rio

forum.linuxcnc.org/show-your-stuff/51142...tan-6-fpga-card-9d60

That's awesome. Farewell Gowin Let's go Spartan!! I'll update...
Wishemeluck

@meister, is there a discord channel/server where linuxcnc users and devs exchange ideas and what not? Read someone here saying discord a few days ago but unaware of one. I'd love an invite to this venue if you or anyone knows of such platform. 

Mecanix wrote:

Ya won't believe this, just found a decade old spartan-6 sitting in the bottom of my abandoned gizmo box. Let me dwload the toolchain for that badboy and I'll give it a trial tomorrow after work. If this all works out as planned I'll get two of those 7I90HD. Haha Magic, Effortless!! 

 

Yeah I've already done that. Great care is required in selecting the pins for the SPI port, selecting just any pins wont give you a successful bit stream.
The way  I designed my boards was to run the Mesa 7i90HD & 7C81 firmware & a custom firmware with it's own board name. The daughter boards support both EPP & SPI interfaces, the way the ports were designed were to allow use with genuine Mesa daughter boards, even being able to supply 5v to the daughter boards via a jumper. I tested my setup with the Mesa firmware with a 7i73 smart serial pendant board and used a heavily modified 7i90hd smart serial firmware to run on a RV901T colorlight board, but will run on any Spartan 6 dev board, yes the 7i90 can be used as a Smart serial board as well, Mesa have firmware configs for this.
The boards now also run the rio firmware and there is basic board config on Ollie's github repo. I suggested a while ago that the 7i90HD would be a good candidate for this project, what makes this a good candidate as well is the dual SPI EEPROMs.
In all honesty running the rio firmware on these boards removes one of the great functions of the Mesa infrastructure, the Smart serial interface.

So yeah having all the info on these 2 boards it wouldn't take long to whip up a board config for them. Just a few slight mods to my own Spartan6 config.

That is so cool. ok 7i90HD x10 here we come!!

Discord channel guys? linuxcnc geekheads hangout you heard of one?? I swear I read cakeslob mentioning about one in another thread, the remora thread if I'm not mistaken.