PXI-4070 not showing up in PXIe-1075 slots 16 & 17

[Bob_S48723]

Hello,

I have a PXIe-1075 using a PXIe-8370/PCIe-8371 remote controller,  4 PXIe-6363, 8 PXIe-2351, and 4 PXI-4070s. The PXI-4070s are required to be plugged into hybrid slots (2 - 5 or 15 - 18). To maximize throughput, the 4070s are plugged into slots 4 and 5 and the other 2 are plugged into slots 16 & 17 so that the DMM's are split to using 2 different PCI to PCI bridges. The issue I am seeing is that the 2 4070s plugged into slots 16 & 17 do not show up in NI MAX, and in device manager, show an error (see attached pics). I can see and use all other modules in the chassis including the other 2 4070s. 

I have 3 other machines running in production with a nearly identical configuration, the only difference is that the other machines use a PCIe-8372(or maybe an old model of the PCIe-8371? The main difference is that the cards in the older machines have 2 ports but the model # isn't screened onto the cards so 8372 is a guess based on the setup booklets) host controller. The PC's are identical between all 4 machines: Advantech Industrial, WinXP sp3, Intel core 2 Quad, 2GB RAM. 

If I remove the PCIe-8372 from one of the working machines and install it in the machine I'm having issues with, I can see and use all of the 4070s so we know that the PXI chassis and 4070s are fine. I have also tried all sorts of different driver versions and uninstalled/re-installed drivers many times as well as the possible solution provided in this post from 2011: http://forums.ni.com/t5/PXI/PXI-4070-DMM-in-PXIe-1075-Chassis-not-found/m-p/1609804/highlight/true#M...

Wondering if anyone else has had issues similar to this?

NI Support Reference #: 2292623

[Robert__R · Accepted solution]

That's an odd problem.  If anything, moving from the 2 port host card to the 1 port host card should help.  A few things...

Have you tried the 2 4070s from slots 16 and 17 in slots 15 and 18?  One of the effects of different host cards is a different interrupt swizzling for legacy interrupts, and shifting them that way will put them on the other 2 lines.  This seems unlikely to be the problem.

Another long shot based on differences between the PCIe-8372 and the PCIe-8371: try removing one of the PXIe boards from the system.  Reason: The PCIe-8371 requests some memory space.  If we're threading a needle with how much the PC will provide then reducing the requirement will bring the net memory usage to 0 (the PCIe-8371 request 1MB, which is the minimum non-zero amount any PCIe/PXIe card can request).

Have you tried the BIOS compatibility software and switch on the PCIe-8371?  http://www.ni.com/download/mxi-express-bios-compatibility-software-1.5/3764/en/

- Robert

[Bob_S48723]

Hi Robert,

I had no idea that the BIOS compatibility software and switch on the card even existed because it is not mentioned on the installation instructions that were handed down to me. I followed the instructions to use the compatibility software and sure enough the BIOS compatibility switch on the MXI card was off. Flipped it on, restarted everything, and everything was showing up.

Thanks for the help!

-- Bob