Encoder question

Good morning gents!! 
I was wondering if a cheap amazon Incremental rotary encoder (5 wire including ground/shield) could be used for a 4th axis? I am using a Mesa 7i97T board and am experiencing so difficulty with it. I can see it count in Hal show but when i try to use it in real time it keeps erroring out...
Once again thank you to all the experts that make this possible!!! 
 

You can use single ended (5 wire) encoders with the 7I97/7I97T
as long as the three 7I97/7I97T encoder jumpers for the single ended
encoder are in the single ended/TTL positions (right hand position)

What error do you get?

The 4th jerks when I enable the machine and i get a following error. The only way I can get it to work is if I enter a crazy high pulse count. It will rotate but with terrible accuracy, like 1 revolution shows a couple of degrees of rotation.

I just checked and they are in the left hand position.... I'm going to swap them over and give it a try!! Thank you as always for your help. 

An immediate following error may also be because the feedback is backwards.
(if the encoder is scaled right and has the correct direction, you may need to
reverse the analog output polarity in the hal file)

Ok, thank you.. thats what im getting. i will try that next.

So not i get no motion and an immediate following error. Before i would get a small amount of rotation but no counts in both configurations. Keep in mind this is a cheap amazon encoder that might just be a piece of junk. When I swapped this 4th from a resolver to an encoder i was able to see like 1440 0r so counts per encoder revolution but for some reason linux just doesnt like this guy. Not a problem, i can get one that y,all recommend.. i just dont know which one to get. It would be nice if I could get this one to work because I had to design/print a new riser/mount to fit the analigm dc servo... I can send you a link to the encoder that i bought if that might help....

You should be able to debug the encoder issue by monitoring these pins::

hm2_7i97.0.encoder.0N.input-a
hm2_7i97.0.encoder.0N.input-b

in halshows 'Watch' tab

Where N is the number of the encoder you want to monitor (0..5)

These pins should toggle as you rotate the encoder

If the a or b hal pins do not change, you can trace back to the hardware
by measuring the voltage at the 7I97 encoder input pins, these should
toggle between near 0V and say +3V to +5V