Successful Raspberry Pi 4 Trixie LinuxCNC install.

Just completed a successful installation of LinuxCNC version 2.9.8 on a Pi 4 with 4 gig of RAM.

Thanks to forum user "NWE" for recommending the version to download, named below:
2026-01-21-raspios-lcnc-2.9.8-trixie-arm64.zip

After downloading and using balenaEtcher to flash a 256Gig micro SD card, it booted to a Debian 13 Trixie style desktop and opened a "boot wizard".  After creating an account, the wizard recommended loading updates.  There was trouble after that, the login dialog box wouldn't accept any userids/passwords.

After rebooting and choosing NOT to load s/w updates, everything worked fine.  

I'm using LinuxCNC to retrofit a 1990's vintage Intelitek ProLight 3000 CNC lathe.  The original lathe was controlled using proprietary h/w and PC-based s/w.  I acquired a Mesa 7i76EU board as recommended by Mesa Technical Support so the journey is underway.

I see that LinuxCNC has a Mesa board config tool so I'll use that.

Any advice or coaching for me as an absolute LinuxCNC newbie is much appreciated.

 

You ought to be able to update straight to 2.9.10 now that you have a working install.

What interfaces / motors does the current setup use? Is it a stepper machine or servos?

If it's a simple stepper machine you could make a start using the hal_gpio module and Pi GPIO pins, but you will need some level-shifting protection as the existing logic is almost cetainly 5V (or 24V) rather than the 3.3V of the Pi GPIO pins.

There is little more than a single bug fix in 2.10 so unless that is going to affect you which it probably isn't, just get your Mesa card up and running with the working system you have.

Thanks very much for your knowledge and advice rodw!

I'm taking it to heart and will NOT update for now.

I'm going to continue posting progress and I hope you'll find it entertaining rather than laughable!

There is little more than a single bug fix in 2.10 so unless that is going to affect you which it probably isn't, just get your Mesa card up and running with the working system you have.

The whole point of version 2.9.10 was that the 'single bug' could crash a users machine. So if the 'which it probably isn't,' turns out to be a wrong assumption then it might actually crash your machine if you happen to use existing probing routines.