LinuxCNC(1)

💖 NAME 💖

elbpcom — the lil' tool that lets you talk to Mesa ethernet cards, bestie. Fr fr. 🦋

This is LinuxCNC(1) territory, so pull up a chair and let's get into it. ✨

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

Okay so here's the vibe. There's a bunch of common options that basically every invocation can carry, and then the actual modes on top of that.

Common options — the little starter pack:

elbpcom [--ip=IP] [--port=PORT] [--timeout=TIMEOUT]
        [--space=MEMSPACE] [--size=TRANSFER_SIZE]

Reading data 📖 — you're here to get info:

elbpcom [common options] [--info] --address=ADDRESS --read=LENGTH

Writing data ✍️ — you're here to send info:

elbpcom [common options] --address=ADDRESS --write=HEXDATA

Read and decode the memory space info area 🔍:

elbpcom [--space=MEMSPACE] --read-info

Sending arbitrary packets 🎲 — chaos mode, we love her:

elbpcom [common options] HEXDATA

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

So basically elbpcom reads or writes data from a Mesa ethernet card that speaks the LBP16 protocol — think like the 7I80 and her friends. It's giving low-level task energy, and honestly? That's exactly the point. 💅

If you wanna know what each address space actually means, go read the card documentation, bestie, because I'm not gonna guess for you. 🌈

⚠️ Real talk though: using this utility wrong can have negative effects. Like, actually. You could end up changing the board's IP address, or even corrupting the FPGA bitfile in the eeprom. That's not a cute surprise, that's a bad time. 😭

And for some jobs — specifically updating FPGA bitfiles and setting IP addresses — mesaflash(1) is the more appropriate tool. Use the right girl for the right job, periodt. 👑

✨ The Defaults ✨

If you don't specify them, here's what you get:

--ip=192.168.1.121 --port=27181 --timeout=.2 --space=0 --size=0

And a lil detail that matters: if the --size argument TRANSFER_SIZE is 0, then elbpcom goes and looks up the preferred transfer size of the space, in that space's info area. She checks first. Iconic behaviour honestly. 🧚

💫 The Example (iykyk) 💫

This one shows you how to read the HOSTMOT2 identifying string from the IDROM in space 0:

$ elbpcom --address 0x104 --read 8
> 82420401
< 484f53544d4f5432
      HOSTMOT2

Okay so let's decode the format, because it's genuinely so satisfying:

1. First, the request is shown in hex. That's the > line. 📤
2. Then the response (if there is one) is shown in hex. That's the < line. 📥
3. Finally, the response is shown in ASCII — and any non-ASCII characters get replaced with .. So clean. ✨

And apparently this is similar to these mesaflash invocations:

$ ./mesaflash  --device 7i80 --rpo 0x104
54534F48
$ ./mesaflash  --device 7i80 --rpo 0x108
32544F4D

…but — and this is the important part, don't skip it — notice its different treatment of byte order. 👀 That's the whole tea. They are not the same and you need to know that.

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• mesaflash(1)
• hostmot2(9)
• hm2_eth(9)
• Mesa's documentation for the Anything I/O boards

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Okay bestie, that's the whole page, we ate and left no crumbs. 💖

This one comes from the LinuxCNC Documentation, dated 2015-04-18, and it lives in the LinuxCNC(1) section. Mwah. 💅🎀