IMAQ with DMA error

[Bruce Anderson]

I have a known working card (IMAQ 1411) with a known working camera (RS-170).  A client's computer (a new low profile Dell desktop) is giving DMA errors when trying to grab frames (using the Measurement and Automation software).

The software suggests that I reduce the size of the frame (I've tried many combinations with the same results).  Both card and camera work in other computers.

What could interfere with this operation?

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

Have them switch the 1411 to another PCI slot if available.

[Bruce Anderson]

I've tried both slots available.

I suspect the problem lies with the fact that the computer is a small form factor with a riser card for PCI expansion.

Will a newer IMAQ card solve this problem?

Is there any related documentation on how to trouble shoot this issue?  I've scoured the forums and have only found a few related problems with no resolution visible.

[SEQEng]

Hi Bruce,

I had a similar problem when Dell switched computers on us... For many years we used the 1411 card with the 2.6 driver in dual processor Xeon PCs. However, when we upgraded to the latest Dell PC and I found that I kept getting a DMA error when trying to grab no matter what size I made the video. One thing that helped was running the PC with only one active processor and HT disabled. However, I need 2 processors for my application so we ended up needing to upgrade to the 3.1.1 driver. Now everything works fine (although I had to reprogram many of my vision algorithms).

By the way, drivers before 3.0 always needed to initialize the card at boot and would flash an initialization banner when entering the OS. If you didn't see this banner then you should manually run the boot.exe in the NI folder. This would also have resulted in a DMA error.

Hope this helps!

Justin