Hot-swap of PXI modules (i.e. not needing to power-down and reboot controller PC)

[Darren Draper]

Is there a facility for providing hot-swapping of PXI modules in a MXI-3 or MXI-4 controller PXI chassis?

i.e. where I might wish to power-down the PXI chassis and replace a module in a given slot, without having to power-down and reboot the controller PC.

This would be very useful, in so much as the time saved in not having to reboot the PC each time I wish to swap a module.  I imagine this would also be useful in a production test environment where a batch of similar modules need to be slotted in and tested individually.

Regards,

Darren

Message Edited by Darren Draper on 03-23-2006 08:25 AM

[hannahW]

Hello Darren,

The supported method when using a MXI link between PC and PXI chassis is to first power on the PXI chassis and then power on the PC. So for shut down to swap modules, you should shutdown both the PC and the PXI chassis and then re-power them in the correct order.

I have found another forum, where one user describes a method they have used to get around this, but this is not supported, and we cannot guarantee that this will work. Here's the link if you're interested.

http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=270&message.id=1302&requireLogin=False

You could give this a try.

Hannah
NIUK & Ireland

[Adam_U]

Good response Hannah.

Since PCI enumeration is handled at a lower level than the OS, the method listed in the other forum could result in a crash of the system when the PCI traffic is disrupted and could corrupt the host PC. The PCI traffic on the bus does not have a method of safe shutdown so even disabling the device in the device manager can cause problems.

-Adam

[SteveL]

The "hot swap" facility would be very useful in any scenario where frequent PXI module swapping is required (e.g. development, diagnostics, etc.). There are alternative solutions that provide this capability with additional hardware (e.g. Adlink), so I would expect NI to be working on their own solution. Can anyone comment on, or confirm this? Future purchasing decisions could be affected by this issue.

Steve