Mesa 7i97T & LinuxCNC setup struggles

Good evening all

I was really holding off on asking for help as i much prefer to figure things out for myself but i'm running up against a few specific struggles and i'm starting to get the feeling that i'm just missing something that perhaps you experienced folk may know about due to experience. 

I have setup a nice pc with Linux Mint 22.1 using the ISO Tommylight provides. the LinuxCNC included in this was 2.1 which seems old and this is however the first detail i might be missing the mark on, in hindsight 2.1 seems to old to be logical so perhaps its a different variant? Regardless, i uninstalled that and installed 2.9.4 which went without a hitch, but did not make anything work any better. 

I then came across MesaCT as pnfconf doesnt support this card. I set the card jumpers as per instructions in MesaCT and i can ping it on 10.10.10.10 but i cannot connect to it.

MesaCT reports that the LinuxCNC version is "version error" - my gut feeling is that the linuxcnc version is newer than the latest update for mesaCT and its just not able to report on it correctly - can anyone confirm if this is preventing operation?

Finally, the detail that i believe is actually stopping MesaCT connecting to the 7i97T - the mesaflash version is reporting (correctly) as 3.4.6, MesaCT notes that for the 7i97T connect, Mesaflash 3.5.3 is required, however i cannot for the life of me find where this is to be obtained, or even any reference to a mesaflash above 3.4.6 other than a few posts on this forum where users mention they are setup with 3.5.x and don't seem to suggest that this was at all difficult. Those posts were all a couple of years ago, has something changed with the version numbering? 

I am not at all new to computers but i dont have a large amount of experience with linux, happy to do the learning but it looks like i need a swift kick in the correct direction! 

Any help greatly appreciated

p.s. i couldnt decide if this should go under "installing" or "general" apologies if i picked wrong. 

You can build from source by following the instructions here:

github.com/LinuxCNC/mesaflash

As for the Linuxcnc version I doubt whether 2.1 could be built on a recent linux distro due to python issues.

That is were i built mesaflash from, however it only nets version 3.4.6 (unless im doing something wrong)

however, this evening i have discovered that you dont actually need to be able to connect to the card with MesaCT in order to build a config. ive had some positive progress with getting one servo&encoder wired in. the encoder shows movement and the servo blips when trying to turn the machine on before it errors out due to following error.

the tricky thing now, is i cant find the specs for these encoders to verify the PPR.

i would still love to know the answers to the original questions ofcourse, as im sure i may need to sort those errors sooner rather than later

Yeah I forgot about mesaflash reporting the wrong version.
I dunno why it does that, might be worth raising an issue.
Pcnconf doesn't let you build a config ?
It's been a while since I've actually had to build a config from scratch.

A following error is usually preceded by a latency error, so check that out, also ethernet latency can be an issue as well. Hopefully PCW might chime in.

Might wanna have a quick look here re network latency
forum.linuxcnc.org/18-computer/56109-lin...l-pc?start=20#329476

As far as mesaflash goes, make sure you do a:

sudo make install

or you will end up running the older preinstalled version of mesaflash.

(current mesaflash version is 3.5.13 )

As far as following errors go, they are expected in initial setup
of analog servo systems. For example, you have a 50% chance of
having the initial feedback direction wrong so you get an instant
runaway when the drives are first enabled.

Follow tommylights link for setup/tuning information.

Thanks everyone, ill dig into the above suggestions. 

And yes, i should have been a little clearer, im not worried about the following error stuff, i was just happy to be seeing signs of life. 

Good evening again all.

Everything above has gone well, i greatly appreciate the advice. I'm now working through Tommys servo tuning guide, aswell as the one i found from PCW, same instructions for the most part. 

I just have one potentially really dumb question, do the servos need to be fitted to the mill for tuning? thats to say, in order to do any tuning at all? Its cold (New Zealand) and im playing with CNC parts in the lounge in front of the fire, but the servos dont really react how i would expect when reading the guides and it occurs to me that they probably need something to load up against in order to work properly? they arnt very happy turning with any P value above 5-10, but this value provides very little torque. the F error is responding to tweaks nicely at a low P value as expected, but i cant then turn up the power without it getting upset. 

While i always intended to fine tune the servos on the machine, i was hoping to continue working through it in the warmth . 

Cheers
Josh