PCI DIO 32HS (6533) Suddenly giving "The device is not responding to the first IRQ level" error, and no longer functioning.

[SharkyTM]

 Greetings NI folks,
  I'm an oceanographer, and have an sidescan sonar data aquasition computer running Windows XP SP2, and NiDAQ 7.0 (Legacy). For several years, this machine has worked flawlessly, but today, I booted it up to test the system for an upcoming job, and I got some strange errors in our sonar program. I tranced the problem to our NI-6533 PCI-DIO-32HS card. I launched NI Automation Explorer to test that the card was responsive, and when I click the "test panel", I get an error: "The device is not responding to the first IRQ level." Continue (yes/no). If I click yes, I can test the digital i/o's, but nothing happens, and all the tests fail (nonresponsive). I tried moving the card to another PCI slot, tried forcing it to have a specific IRQ that was unused by anything else, and finally tried moving it to another computer that had never been used with the DIO card. I'm still getting the error, and the card is nonresponsive. I'm at the limit of my abilities, and would like to know if there's anything else I can do, or should we send the card back to NI for repair/diagnosis.

Thanks.

:somehow, this also eneded up in the LabView forum. If a mod can delete that thread, I'd appreciate it.

[Neal M]

Hi SharkyTM,

The error you are getting appers to be occuring during the Self Test the card runs when you open a test panel.  This checks to make sure that the hardware is working correctly, which apparently it isn't.  You've already done most of the things that I would try to troubleshoot the card, but I have a couple questions for you:  Has anything changed in your HW setup (e.g. a new PCI card installed or removed)?  Is the second computer that you tried the same type (brand, CPU, etc) as the origional one? This may change the IRQ channels that the card uses.  However, since you manually tried to change the IRQ channel, this may not be the source of the problem.  While you were moving the hardware,  did you use the Device Manager to completely uninstall the HW?  If you did not, the computer may still try to use the same IRQ channel.

If it is possible, one option you could try is to uprgrade the driver to Traditional DAQ 7.4.4.  This would take care of this issue if it is a driver problem (corruption or something similar).

If you would like to send the card to NI for an RMA,  you will need to create a phone service request.  The easiest way to do this is to go to www.ni.com/contact and select "Request Support".  Tell the Applications Engineer you talk to what you have already done with the card and they will be able to help you.

I hope this gives you some guidance.

[SharkyTM]

Neal,
  Thanks for the reply. We actually called NI today, and found out that one of the chips that controls the handshake routine "wears out" (words of the support tech my coworker spoke to). Its $150 to send the card in, and thats the flat fee to repair this problem. It turns out that an identical sonar unit suffered the same failure a few months ago, one owned by a close friend of our company. We talked to him, and he sent us to NI's support folks. They were exceedingly helpful, and the card is on its way to you for repair. I'll report back if this fixes the problem.

In any case, nothing changed in the HW setup on the original machine, and I did use the device manager to uninstall the card completely. The second computer is not the same model, its quite a bit newer, but has ZERO interface cards (integrated VGA, integrated network, etc), so should have nothing to interfere with the 6533's function. I manually assigned several IRQs, none of which had any effect. Hopefully, all will be fixed in 2 weeks.

Luckily, the job I was out on today turned out very well even without the sonar unit. Thanks for the prompt reply.