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Trying to use 8420 serial card with PXI-1000 chassis

     With MXI-3, the serial port hardware (8420/2) plugged into the PXI chassis at slot 2 was not passing self-test:  When I click on COM5, the NI-serial troubleshooting wizard opens to an Interrupt Resource Conflict discussion.When opening Event Viewer as recommended in the wizard, I don’t see errors that seem related to an IRQ conflict.  Further, when I check System Information, nothing besides the 8420 (and ports) is assigned to IRQ 20.  So, I moved the card several slots down in the chassis to slot 6 and got this message: 

with a red x by Hardware Presence Verified.  However, when I look at the 8420 from Device Manager,  And right-click on one of the ports, Device Manager sees the port and says that it’s working properly. I’ve gone over http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/2897 and searched through PXI Discussion Forums for 8420, along with reading Knowledge Base article 267FAS5P without turning up a specific answer to my question.   What do I need to do to get the 8420 to work in the chassis?  First, in slot 2, I would like to know what is the real issue if not an IRQ conflict, and with slot 6, I wonder why the Troubleshooting Wizard stalls on detecting the hardware, when the Device Manager sees it.
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Because the pictures aren't showing on browsers in various machines, please see the attached document for screen captures and explanation.

 

Regards, Ted

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Hi Ted,

 

Can you please post a screenshot of the chassis and ports in Measurement & Automation Explorer? What operating system are you using? Also, can you please give me some more information regarding the Event Viewer and logged errors?

 

What happened when you followed the steps in the KnowledgeBase?

Thank you,

Simran K
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
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Hi Simran,

 

     Please see attached file showing answers to your questions.

 

Regards, Ted

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Hi Ted,

 

I forgot to mention that you can also try disabling and enabling the ports.

 

Regards,

Simran K
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
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Hi Simran,

 

     After disabling and re-enabling the ports via Device Manager, the Serial Troubleshooting Wizard still generated a pop-up saying "one or more serial ports failed."  Also the main Troubleshooting Wizard screen has a red X by "COM ports sequentially verified."

 

Regards, Ted

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Please see attached some further questions after looking at the address ranges of the 8420's COM ports.

 

Thanks, Ted

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Hi Ted,

 

I noticed that all the ports are showing up in Measurement & Automation Explorer and there should not be a problem communicating with those ports. The memory conflict message you are receiving in Device Manager is just a warning to indicate that more than one port is sharing a memory address space. This does not affect the devices functionality.

 

Can you please validate the ports in Measurement & Automation Explorer and perform a loop back test. The following article provides information on how to do a loopback test.

How to Do a Serial Loopback Test

If you are unable to validate the ports in MAX, go to the port properties in Device Manager and and change the COM port number under Port Settings » Advanced. Restart your computer and go into Measurement & Automation Explorer and try validating the ports again. If are able to validate the ports, do a loopback test.

Thank you,

Simran K
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
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Hi Simran,

 

These steps were taken:

 

1) Validation - COM5

 

A message appeared, "Successfully opened a VISA session... all of the parameters on this page are valid."

 

2) Loop Back Test 

a) Getting a null modem to work on the PC's COM1

 

Initially, with a "null modem" based on just crossing pins 2 and 3 for loopback, HyperTerminal didn't respond.

 

Then handshake wires were added to construct a null modem in accordance with instructions on http://www.lammertbies.nl/comm/info/RS-232_null_modem.html. As before, pins 2 and 3 were wired together. This null modem version did work with Hyperterm.

 

b) Evaluation with the 8420 card on COM5 

 

With the null modem plugged into the PXI-8420 card, and HyperTerm communication set to COM5, nothing happened on the PC screen as keyboard buttons were pressed.  This was the case both with this null modem or with simply pins 2 and 3 connected.

 

3) Additional Steps

 

a) Baseline COM1 - With the null modem connected, upon running the Basic Serial Write and Read.vi - the string in the "string to write" field appeared almost immediately in the "read string" field.

b) COM5 Setup and Start: An RS-232 breakout box with red and green two-color LEDs showed the polarity of each signal. After the vi had started, color change on the LEDs connected to CTS and DTR showed some activity. This showed the COM5 selection in the Basic Serial Write and Read.vi matched the hardware port connected to the null modem.

c) Stopping: Also, with COM5 selected, the vi didn't stop on its own and had to be stopped with the Stop button on the LabVIEW screen.

d) Side Note: After the vi was stopped, for some reason, when clicking on the pulldown to select a COM port, COM5 had to the left of it, an icon with two yellow monitors next to each other as if some communication attempt was still going on.

 

What's next?

 

Regards, Ted

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Hi Ted,


Thank you for being so patient and helping us troubleshoot this issue. From your last post (3c and 3d), it seems like you are aborting the VI and you see the 2 yellow monitor icon because the VISA session is still open. Can you please run the Basic Serial Write and Read.vi under highlight execution and let me know what part of the code is causing the problem? Also, please let me know the answers to the following questions.

1) What version of NI-Serial are you using? If you have not updated the drivers recently, try downloading the latest version of the driver.
2) Has this card ever worked before?
3) I noticed that you also have a 6071E in the chassis. Are you able to use the 6071E card without any problems?
4) Do you power up the chassis before you power up the PC?

Thank you,

Simran K
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
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