Plasma THC

Sorry, i missed something :
Or it can be reduced to one, Mesa output signal to connect. This is depending on how easy it is to give the Mesa servo a step & dir command.

There is no access to the step/dir signals with a hardware step generator.
All controls must be at a higher level, for example stepgen commanded velocity and stepgen position feedback. There 's no reason this cannot be done but it requires someone to understand how the Toma control operates and replace the low level bit fiddling with higher level commands. This also applies to position and velocity mode servos.

@ Grotius: I'm using nema 23 steppers with DM542A drivers, does maintain the stepgen heading?

@PCW: Pretty much what I expected; apparently it was naive of me to expect that it would work.

So do I have to sacrifice a virgin to Linus Torvald?

Of the links that rodw posted, one was "under conctruction" and the other was vague and wasn't quite what I was looking for.

David,

Hmm, i am thinking about pcw :

but it requires someone to understand how the Toma control operates

I don't ever tried Mesa my own, so i can only talk about steppers and stepper compatible servo systems at this moment.
I have ordered a FPGA development board last week, maybe this will bring happyness.

Can i choose in the linuxcnc stepconfig wizard your configuration setup?

I can make a conversion from the stepgenerator input to servo output if i know what the servo system needs.
I can also insert a component into the existing toma code. Last week i published the schematics of this Toma code, done with dot.py
I insterted a Mux4 component into the Toma code to avoid probing each time. But better is to leave the Toma code untouched.
I will be better of in C programming style, it works must faster, and i can write it from beginning to end by myself. Much better.

So do I have to sacrifice a virgin to Linus Torvald?

Haha, if you order a chinese stepper board, 5 dollar, you are ready to go with Toma.

Rather than wading through Toma's Byzantine hal file, Why dont you start with the existing tchud component as rodw suggested a number of posts before. Thcud doesn't require access to any low level signals so it is applicable to servo, software stepper and hardware stepper systems. If it has deficiencies, fixing them would benefit anyone using a external up/down type THC device.

Okay, I'll see what I can do with THCUD; I suppose I'll learn how to add in the utilities as I learn the program.

@Grotius: I used PNCCONF to build a 7i76e before converting it to the 7i96, since there's no direct support for the board yet.
I do have a cheap parallel board and a parallel port card, but the torch I'm using has a HF start; which completely screws up the Arduino/GRBL board I was using...

I was trying to keep my rig away from the table, because I'm not yet running a water tray (long story), but I suppose this will have to work for now.