MXI3 (NI PXI-8330) board not detected. Not powering up, no link light.

[PeteMan]

MXI3 (NI PXI-8330) board not detected. Not powering up, no link light. Cable looks fine. Any ideas?

[Claudia]

PeteMan,

I will need to know in more detail how your system is behaving to give you better tips, so please feel free to send me more information.

For now, let me send you a couple of troubleshooting tips:

1. Cable connection
   Make sure both ends of the copper cable are well connected to the PCI-MXI-3 and the PXI-MXI-3 boards. Be careful when disconnecting the copper connectors. you need to push down the plastic connector so it does not get damaged. Damaged connectors could result in bad MXI-3 links.
   If the connector has not been used properly, it could be broken (this rarely happens). Make sure you are not connecting the cable backwards.
   
2. Power - Up order.
   It seems you are controlling your PXI chassis using a PCI-to-PXI extender (copper cable). Make sure you are powering up the PXI chassis BEFORE powering up the PC.
   PXI is built on top of the CompactPCI spec, so it uses the PCI high speed bus. The MXI-3 extender is really a PCI-to-PCI bridge toyour computer, so for your PC, all the slots in the PXI chassis look like more PCI slots. In other words, your computer suddenly has more PCI slots.
   It is very important to power up the PXI chassis first before powering up the computer, because at power up the PC enumerates all PCI slots. If the PXI chassis is OFF during boot up, the slots in the PXI chassis will never get enumerated and your PC will never see the board installed in the PXI chassis.
   
3. Normal Power up LED sequence
   Each MXI-3 board has four LED light on its front panel: two green lights (POWER and LINK) and two orange lights (Tx and Rx). When you power up the PXI chassis you should see one green light and one orange light ON steadily (POWER and ). Then, when you power up the PC, both green lights shoudl be ON steadily and the orange lights shoudl flicker.
   If you do not see this behaviour at power up, most probably one of your boards its damage.
   If you have another MXI-3 extender kit, try to set up the system mixing the boards from the two kits to try isolate which board is the one that is damaged.
   
4. Run the MXI-3 Optimization Software
   The MXI-3 Optimizaton Software makes sure that the link between the PC and the PXI chassis has been set up properly. It will show you an error otherwise.
   MXI-3 Software Version 1.15 for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME
   
5. The PC powers up fine if the PXI chassis is OFF, but if I turn on the PXI chassis first and then try to power up my PC, my PC does not boot
   There are several things that could be causing this behaviour:
   
   • It could be that your PC has an old BIOS that has issues detecting PCI-to-PCI bridges. You could try upgrading the BIOS.
     
   • A part of the hardware could be damaged. If you have a main-stream computer (like a DELL or HP PC, for example), test your MXI-3 extender in it to make sure that the hardware is in good conditions. Main-stream computers tend to use new Motherboards with good BIOS.

There are more tips in the following KnowledgeBase:
KB 267FAS5P : MXI-3 Troubleshooting Guide

Hope this helps,

Claudia Lorente
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
http://www.ni.com/ask

[PeteMan]

Thanks Claudia,

It actually turned out that the PXI chassis
had a dead +/- 5V power supply, which was
fixed via a warranty repair.

Pete